Monday 3 September 2007

After work my friend and I went fishing at Wilderness for Cob. The Easterly wind was blowing fairly strong during the day, so when we arrived at Wilderness, it was obvious that the surf was a bit big for Cob, but hoping that it will calm down later in the evening.

The spot that I chose to fish had a gully on the left, sandbank in the middle and a gully on the right. You could clearly see that the sea had  a westerly current draw in the gullies but on the sandbank the waves were rolling straight onto the shore.

I made two casts onto the sandbank with only sand crabs demolishing my Pilchard on my 7/0 Bandit hook. With a freshly loaded Pilchard, I made my third cast onto the sandbank. After about 10 minutes at 19h20, my ratchet of my Shimano 15/30 were screaming. I lifted my rod out of the stainless steel sand pen and set the hook with one good back stroke. The fish was on.

The fish took some line at first, but I managed to turned its head, and I was slowly winning the fight. The fish swam left into the gully, so I had to follow it left up shore due to the Westerly draw of the current. I thought that it could be a nice Cob but big was my surprise on the first glimpse of the Musselcracker. The excitement was big when I firmly gripped the fish behind the gills in the shallow waters to pull it onto safe ground.

The Musselcracker weighed 11.1 kg. I normally fish with chokka, but when the water is cold, the fish prefer softer bait like Pilchard. Good catches were made in the last two weeks along the Garden Route Coast. So things are looking good for the up coming summer angling season…