Fishing at Dawn-Thirty!!

Thursday, Oct 21  Sunrise in South Africa

It's rare that I ever see a sunrise, but it was spectacular!!

This was probably the first time on this trip that I ask myself what the heck I was doing?!?  Paying someone so I could set my alarm for 4 a.m. and drive 1.5 hours to get on a fishing boat.  Thank goodness we had good weather and we did catch fish!  Dennis was happy... so I was happy!

Dennis caught the first fish-- a "Hake"

We fished with 2 other young men and we all caught fish, but Dennis and I caught the most.  Hake was our mission for deep sea fishing at a depth of 200 feet with our weight on the bottom of the ocean.  We both caught our limit of 5; plus, Dennis caught some for the other two guys.

...but no doubt, I caught the biggest "Hake"!

Thanks to Mark he baited our hooks and unhooked all our fish for us!  He even held them for our pics, I just had to drop and crank... I could do that!

DT caught a few throw-backs as well.  He actually caught 4 small sharks and a catfish-looking thing that had poisonous barbed fins.  Guide said it wouldn't kill you, but most likely you would have reaction to the  stick.

This is the shark he caught in deep sea.

Once we moved to the reef area we fished at a depth of only 50 feet and our weight was raised just off the bottom. Sure made for "less cranking"!  I caught the first 4 fish in that area... I was trying to catch up with Dennis!

I caught 3 of these Red Romans

I caught couple of these, I don't know real name,

but they call it "Big Eye"

Dennis caught 3 reef sharks that were striped, called  "Pajama Shark".  Sorry, this is not very good pic to see the stripe on the side... but he was a shark fishing fool!

Pajama Shark

I caught the only "Rock Cod"

We did see a seal and that little rascal stole one of the guy's fish he was reeling up while we were in deep sea.

While deep sea fishing, we also saw a "Mola Mola Ocean Sunfish". which the guide said was about 600 lbs!  It looked like all head and a short-tailed blob.  I read on internet, they get to be over 2,000 lbs.

Mola Mola Ocean Sunfish about 600 lbs

This one, it is laying sideways

It was curious and swam around the boat in circles a few times and then went away.   He surfaced once and then stayed just a few feet under the clear water when he was circling.  He would swim upright or lay sideways and go along.  We could see him and tried to take pictures, but they weren't very good.  He was really cool.   He was huge!   Here's a better pic I got off the internet, so you could see what it looked like (I was going to insert a link, but heck, here's the pic)

Mola Mola Ocean Sunfish... I'm sure this is a copyright violation...oops!

After fishing the two areas and catching lots of fish, we took our catch and headed back to shore.

I drove the boat as we headed back to shore...
you can see the captain standing in front of the driver's area.
He had total faith in me!  ...but, rest of the passengers didn't!

As we approached shore, it was the same as the whaling boat -- just ramming full speed upon the sand.   So strange   ...no, I wasn't driving then!

This is a view in the boat ramming full speed straight ahead to that sandy shore!

Perfect skid onto the sand!  Waiting for the trailer.

Our Captain, Darrell, filleted some of our fish for the four of us to eat for lunch!

... and the local restaurant right there at the ocean shore cooked them for us along with some chips.    We had Hake and actually there was another fish that DT caught, but I could never understand what they called it... it sounded something like cabajero.  It was similar texture to the Hake - white and flaky.

It's only fresher if it's still swimming!   It was yummy!

While we were waiting for our fish to be cooked, we sat on the deck at the restaurant and watched them load the boat onto the trailer.  They basically, just forced the trailer down and partially under the boat from the front of the boat.

Forced trailer under boat...

The trailer had rollers on the top side, so the boat began to partially roll onto the trailer, but the back of the boat was still on the ground.  At that point they began to hoist the boat all the way on the trailer with a winch attached to the tractor.

Winched boat rest of the way onto trailer...

The trailer can be pushed or pulled by the tractor.  There is no nose on the trailer, it has a straight bar that can be used on both ends; therefore, he can push the boat out forward or pull them in forward.

Parked and ready for the next Fishing Charter!

I'm sure this was information you were anxious to know! It was pretty interesting to watch though - ha!

Fun day of Fishing with Plett Fishing Charters
Mark, Me, Darrell,  and Dennis
...but, it was still too early to get up!