Monthly Archives: December 2013

Well the wind dropped to allow us out on Jaguar and the guys had a great day out catching some snoek first off in the morning and then heading on out for some yellowfin tuna action.

Anton and friends joined us for an offshore tuna fishing charter on saturday. Sea conditions were good but the fishing proved to be tough on the day, the first day out after a 5 day SE blow. All was quiet until at 1:05pm we had a double hookup on the back lines. The one rod was smashed as the line broke  before we were even able to take the rod out of the holder, the first time this has happened to us which begs the question just how big was that tuna? The second hookup stuck and after a 35 minute fight under the guidance of skipper Alistair and veteran assistant Nick we managed to boat a magnificent big eye tuna. Even without a scale onboard the guys knew this fish was way over 100kgs, the biggest big eye taken onboard Obsession!

The cleaned weight of the big eye was 110.18kg on the scale. Using a conversion factor  of 1.25 (http://www2.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fisheries/res/imp/98othon.html) based on sampling conducted by the US Observer Program and endorsed by ICCAT  for  estimating big eye tuna round weights (actual weight of tuna before cleaning) from dressed weights (cleaned weight  of tuna), the  round weight or actual weight of our big eye is 137.7 kgs. However this includes the weight of the head and tail which the dressed weight in the formula does not include. Taking off 10 kgs for the head and tail the fish’s official weight is 127,7kgs.

Due to strong SE winds putting pay to any chance of getting offshore this week, Cyril decided to join us fishing onboard Addiction at Dassen Island. Its uncanny just how good the weather can be at Dassen many days when the SE wind is tormenting the peninsula… We were lucky to view about 30 Humpback whales over the course of the morning in close proximity to the boats and to top it all we also caught a few snoek.

Daneel and friends plus father in law to be joined us for a offshore tuna charter. Conditions were a bit lumpy but we had a great day with yellowfin and longfin being boated all taken on the back lines. We also tagged and released 3 juvenile yellowfin tuna as part of ORI’s tagging programme.

Anton and friends joined us for a tuna charter and we got stuck into good schools of Longfin tuna with double hookups the whole day. Great action all round and although the yellowfin were few and far between we did manage to land one as well.