FANTASY BECOMES REALITY by Henry Gouws
A
FTER 14 years of competing in the Billfish 15 000, our team has finally taken top honours.What a privilege and honour! Although preparation for a tournament like this takes many months, the assembled team, consisting of myself as skipper, Mario Els, Malcolm van der Merwe and Rian van Vuuren, really only got to prepare the final tackle, boat, lures and baits for the coming days on Saturday 11 November. On the Sunday afternoon, just before registration I looked over the tackle and, much to my surprise and dismay, saw less than five lures, two large teaser lures, a dredge and some pitch baits! This was going to be very different to previous years. So this was the game plan – swim three hooked lures, two teasers and a dredge, wait for Mr Marlin to show himself and pitch. Simple! On the Monday morning we launched among the first wave of boats at daybreak. On a hunch, we headed north towards Rondekop, fishing all the way on the ledge, targeting marlin. Our spread consisted of a Marlin Magnet on the left long rigger, a Swazi on the long right rigger and an Islander Black Hole with a strip bait in the shotgun position. We had a monster tube on the left teaser close in, and a Brasiliano on the right teaser swimming slightly behind the Pulsator dredge.This spread was deployed for the entire competion, with the only exception being that the the Black Hole was changed to a Pulsator Tube on Wednesday. Late on Monday morning we arrived in an area off Rondekop in 600m of water where we have had some success in the past. It wasn’t long before a blue marlin jumped onto the Swazi, and Malcolm successfully released the fish. FantaSea was on the scoreboard in seventh place. On Tuesday morning, buoyed by the previous day’s success, we again headed for the deep off Rondekop. Same spread, same place, no result and we drop to 11th place. Undeterred, on Wednesday we again headed to Rondekop deep. Around midday, the Black Hole on long got some attention.A nice blue was hooked and peeled a couple hundred metres of line before getting off! Choice words were spoken, the mood turned black and the slack line was retrieved. We soon realised tackle failure was responsible for the lost marlin! It turned out the crimp on the hook had pulled. Closer examination revealed the crimp was not crimped! Some really choice words were spoken and everyone was seriously depressed. The spread was reset and the Black Hole replaced with a Pulsator Tube.We had just decided it was time to light the braai, and then off went the tube! Mario was in the chair and successfully releases a black marlin giving us species bonus points! Perhaps the tackle failure was a blessing in disguise because we jumped 22 • SKI-BOAT March/April 2024
