After a highly successful days fishing yesterday and winds forecast between 3 and 6 knots, confidence levels were at an all time high as we launch at the new Coral Bay Marina and headed out towards the North Passage.
Leaving the protected Sanctuary Zone we caste the trusty purple lures in and Hanno and Stelleen readied themselves for some Spanish Mackeral runs. After all we had a double hookup in this area at this time yesterday so why not today. After 90 minutes of trolling and not the slightest hint of a run a change in tactics was required.
The neighbours in the caravan had been filling their boat with Red Emperor each day, out deep. So we headed for the 60metre line looking for a bit of structure to drift over. We soon learnt that there is a lot of water out there and not a lot of structure. The fancy new chart plotter turned up nothing but dead flat bottom.
Our next plan was to return to the outside of the reef where we had found a nice bit of structure that produced a number of good fish yesterday. Sure to be plenty of fish there we said.
Same reef but entirely different fishing. Seems the sharks that proved a nuisance yesterday had spread the word that we would provide them with an easy feed. At one stage we saw 3 sharks circling just below our boat waiting for us to pull a fish up to the surface. Hanno obliged with a good size fish and saw it disappear into the mouth of one of the sharks. One of my rigs disappeared straight into the mouth of another shark before it had dropped 10 foot below the surface.
To cut a long story short we didn't trouble the scorers today and we certainly didn't get dirty at the filleting table.
At least the coral dive on the way home was successful. Tied up to a buoy marked "For Authorised Vessels only" after deciding we were authorised and had a thoroughly enjoyable dive. Very interesting coral, lots of fish and we even followed a turtle around for 5 or so minutes.
After sunset drinks on the beach we sampled a few of the fillets from yesterday's catch. Delicious.