I visited the Southern Cape a couple of years ago to throw a fly in the salt with good friends Jazz Kuschke and LeRoy Botha, the main fish species in mind being garrick, yellowtail and bonito. Yes, yes, I know that sounds like a tall order…But that’s what we live for right, and sometimes dreams do come true, I mean just look at what Jazz pulled off, landing multiple bonito on fly from the rocks just before our mission!

We fished several rocky points in that area and while the fishing was tough from shore (what’s new!?), we all still managed to scratch a few smaller species out of the sea on fly – LeRoy walking away with the fish of the trip, a beautiful juvenile white musselcracker.

We didn’t catch any of the target species we prepared ourselves for, but we did see some incredible things that made me think about the place a lot (which also made a re-visit absolutely necessary). One of the things we stumbled across were hammerhead sharks patrolling along one of the rocky points, within fly-line casting distance. Over a period of three days, I only got two good shots at the hammerheads and the bigger fish of the two aggressively rushed towards the ‘plonk’ of the Clouser and circled the area energetically as it looked for something to eat – this made me realise that they may potentially eat a fly, the right fly though and not a Clouser of course. Now, while a Clouser might certainly not have been the ideal fly for these sharks, I had no choice but to throw at them what was already tied to the end of my line, because the shots at the sharks were obviously few and far between (and they moved fast, so the window was small) and we were mostly throwing flies for bonnies (hence the Clousers).

Nevertheless, this got me thinking about how one could successfully target hammerhead sharks (or simply hammers) on fly from shore and the concept rig consisted of a popper fished with a trailing dropper fly, and in my mind this dropper simply had to be a Jimmy Eagleton silicone baitfish pattern. So, a few years later, I got to re-visit the southern Cape, this time with Jimmy “the Shark Man” himself (sadly, in the meantime Jazz had moved to St. Francis Bay with his family and wasn’t close-by anymore, and LeRoy had to cancel on the last minute due to personal commitments).

In the early morning hours (like 4 am) of a fairly long drive from Cape Town area to the Southern Cape, Jimmy and I discussed a few of our dream saltwater fish species on fly, while sipping coffee and peering wide-eyed into the dark through the windscreen. We spoke about targeting the hammers, catching the ‘red seabreams’ santer bream (aka, soldiers) and red roman from shore, getting garrick over 1 m on fly, and catching yellowtail and bonito from shore, among various other things (Jimmy also wanted to catch a big blacktail on his new Echo Bad Ass Glass 6-weight rod, badly, but that’s another story…).

The sun was already up when we arrived at the first spot we intended to fish, so we hurriedly scrambled over the rocks to get a glimpse of the sea and to hopefully spot some fish. We reached the rocky shoreline out of breath and immediately saw numerous hammers swimming highly exposed on the surface of turquoise seawater. “What the…!?”, we said simultaneously in disbelief and bolted straight back to the car to get our tackle. We were surprised to see so many of them straight away.

In a mad rush, we rigged 9-weight and 12-weight rods with a selection of flies that would cover at least several of the fish species we could come across during the course of the day. I fished my popper-dropper rig on a 12-weight and a Rio GT floating line, a NYAP as the popper and a Jimmy Eagleton silicone baitfish pattern as the dropper, tied onto 1 m of 30 lb hard fluorocarbon tippet underneath the NYAP.

The hammers showed a lot of interest in the silicone baitfish and many tried to eat it, but I missed their takes. Eventually, after a few eats like that I looked at the silicone baitfish pattern and noticed that the hammers bit the bucktail off just before the bend of the hook – so they were clearly eating it, but taking short.

During this frustration, while trying to figure out the hammers and fine-tuning the fly rig for them, we also made some casts with Clousers on the 9 wts and especially whenever the sharks sporadically disappeared (the schools of sharks came and went, sometimes staying away an hour or so before suddenly reappearing, out of the blue). Liquorice all-sorts came out on the Clousers, including many olive grunters, shad, various pufferfish species, blacktail, and lesser amberjack, until suddenly, we got hit by a school of soldiers. Chaos ensued as Jimmy and I went ‘vas’, over and over again with aggressive soldiers that came from a school of fish that seemed nearly endless in numbers. Astonished and completely overstimulated, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, we handed out high fives while admiring the beautiful colours of this stunning red seabream.

Soldiers (aka santer bream) came out in good numbers and as a surprise catch while targeting hammers.

The olive grunter is an aggressive little reef fish that eagerly attack biggish flies meant for larger species.

The odd, decent shad was a welcome by-catch on the trip as well…

Lesser amberjack was another lekker surpise on the trip (and yet another dream fish for me on fly).

Back to the hammers: After a lot of presentations and much frustration I eventually managed to hook a small hammer in the mouth – but the fish pulled loose within seconds due to the slack in the fly line caused by our elevation on the rocks. I was gutted and it suddenly felt like I had lost a fish of a lifetime…But, as I was standing there in silence, gathering the slack and trying not to lose myself, I saw a much bigger hammer swim into casting range and this time much closer to me.

Confident with the specific colour of the silicone (they seemed to have a preference for a silicone with a fluorescent white head – as per Jimmy’s input) and the right distance between the popper and the dropper (slightly longer, like 1.5 m, which worked better than 1 m), I flicked the flies out and placed them about 2 m ahead of the shark. The hammer reacted instantly, gliding towards the splash where the flies landed and it started circling that immediate area. I left the silicone to sink in line with the shark before giving a few short strips, which really got the shark interested. The hammer lit up with the sub-surface ‘walk-the-dog’ motion of the silicone baitfish and started giving chase aggressively; the trick was then to suddenly stop the retrieve and let the silicone ‘flutter’ down; the lit-up shark would then engulf the seemingly ‘injured’ baitfish slowly sinking into the depths. Everything went according to the plan, I stopped the jerky retrieve, the fly slowly sank down and the hammer made its move, it swam over the baitfish fly with its wide head and visibly engulfed it (gills flaring). I gave the shark about 2 seconds before setting the hook as hard as I could without snapping the 30 lb tippet.

After setting the hook, maintaining direct contact with the hammer was key as any slack would result in a thrown hook from the violent headshakes of the shark (which made me lose the previous one). The hooked hammer then bolted off into the bay and went on a proper fast and hard run. Amazed by its power and speed, I clenched onto the 12-weight and tightened the drag as tight as I felt comfortable with 30 lb tippet…

My first hammer on fly, a free-swimming fish that ate one of Jimmy Eagleton’s silicone baitfish patterns – a dream come true.

By then, Jimmy was standing next to me shouting instructions as we both watched backing disappear into the ocean. “That’s good!”, he shouted, “Let him swim and get away from these sharp rocks”, he continued. Jimmy’s words made sense, so instead of bullying the hammer I just let it do its own thing out there. It eventually tired and came to shore, where Jimmy tailed the fish along the sketchy rock shelf below our feet; we placed the shark in a rock pool to rest and took a few photos after removing the hook, while dodging furious bites from it that came close to latching onto my ankles (do not underestimate the power of these creatures, they bite when handled and their squirms are much stronger for their size than you think!). When we were done admiring the mysterious animal, Jimmy lobbed it back into the turquoise water and we watched in awe how it swam off with a few powerful flicks of its tail; it was by no means a giant hammerhead, but just like that, we caught soldiers with hammers (and various other things), without any expectations.