Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Getting beaten up by Great White sharks

The weekend before last was not good for fishing at all.
We had gale force winds and rain for the whole weekend.
We were brave enough on Saturday morning to brave the elements but just waisted our time. The wind nearly blew us off the rocks at Glentana and we were not even able to catch a live bait to slide.
The rest of the week we spend planning and dreaming

During last week I heard the guys are hooking into nice sharks and stingray's at Mosselbay. I decided to try my luck there this past weekend.

I arrived there on a very misty Saturday morning and heard that Freddie hooked and landed a 121kg 197cm great white shark already(new southern cape record)While I greeted the guys two off them got picked up by great whites.

Now in a hurry to get ready I quickly caught some Strepies to slide in for the sharks.
Not too long after I saw movement at my rod tip and suddenly the fight started. I was into a young great white but it bit of my leader line on the edge just before we could land it.

New bait in and about a hour later my reel started making that very familiar smile on your face noise. Shark on again. This time it was a much bigger shark and a few times it had us holding our breath as it nearly ran all the line off my reel. It took me running and falling all over the rocks trying to keep up to it and winning back some line. After a 3 hour fight it did not seem to tire at all. I wish I could say the same for me.

And then the worst happened. It pulled my line over a rock full off black mussels and it got cut off. What a disappointment.

In the time I had that one on Riaan landed another one of 196cm. And a few guys got picked up but got either broken lines, trace failures or bitten off. The bigger sharks seem to like biting through the 440lb carbon coated stainless steel wire. Maybe that is a good thing cause I reckon there is no way in hell to stop that train when it realized its hooked.

During Saturday we counted 23 hook ups of which only 2 got landed. We all headed home with broken tackle, stiff bodies and very broken ego's.

No comments: