I dunno about those Beatles and their whole “We all live in a Yellow Submarine” bullshit… Who the fuck wants to live on a submarine anyway…. ? God damn hippies…

Just before Christmas I took a suicidal day off during the busiest time of the year, pissing off my business partners no doubt, to head out and chase some of those Yellow Submarines that had been frequenting our deepwater coastline… One of the best seasons in years, and the constant pinging of my phone with pictures from mates of the insane fishing during my psycho season, had me jonesing like a meth head to get out and go tight…

Opportunity/Destiny/Occasion/Chance and wherever else decided to arrive and have a full on orgy under the stars aligning saw me at 6:00am stepping aboard Sean Todd’s MiThyme in Hout Bay, and been leisurely jettisoned off into the wide blue yonder… in truth we banged like fuck the whole ride out… a piss poor quartering head on sea made for a long, bumpy ride… 2 hours sleep under my belt, I white knuckled the rail above my head for balance and settled into the inevitably unsettling bounce/bang/bounce as best I could…

The Yellow Submarines played Hide and Seek like a bunch of spiteful little girls for the whole morning… Sean tried everything to get us on the fish, but in truth, they were being bitches.. patchy here and there, the Cavicom ringing more often than my office line with skippers spread everywhere singing the same tune ” Where you okes? …. Where..? Any action… Ja couple marks but nothing eating… Ja we had a fish on the back lines but pulled fucking hooks… We tight here behind this trawler, pull in… Where you ? Fuck we’re miles from you.. worth coming up?”.. and so on and so on.. We hit a few trawlers, saw a couple boats alongside go tight here and there but Lady Luck flipped us the bird…

In amongst the “where you? Hows it going? any fish” came a call from one of Seans mates… they were sitting 12 miles inside of us, and they were tight… ” Come bru, trust me.. 15 kilos.. full up..”
15 kilos… we ummmed and ahhhhed… if we ran the 12 miles in, that would be our lot for the day… no ways we were then running back out if it wasn’t firing… Damned if you do, goat fucked if you don’t…
Sean, his trusty deckie Jack debated.. I threw in my 10 cents for what it was worth ( fuck all I reckon, but lekker to pretend you know what the hell you’re talking about ) and we stuck it out in the deep for another 40 minutes rationalising that running 12 miles for 15 kilo Yellowfin Tuna, even if they were full up was maybe not what we’d come for… Far from being submarines, that size yellowfin are not exactly what Cape anglers are after, nor geared for… not on 50lb Stand Up gear… of course I was carrying a veritable arsenal of spin gear, from 15lb spinning gear, to 80lb Jigging gear… so when the call came again ” Sean, you guys getting fish out there….? Nah..? Then come… trust me, its still on” followed by the reaffirmation of the coordinates… Fuck it, let’s run.. I’m amped cause I’ve got light spin gear, 20lb set ups and some little sinking Stickbaits… Candy for 15 kilo class yellowfin… fuck yeah I could dig on some of that…

Hammers down and 25 minutes later we pulling up to a set of 4 or 5 boats…. the first thing that hits me, like a punch to the side of the face, is the smell…. as we tap off, from my perch on the fly bridge I can see why… floating amongst the boats was a Brown Submarine… a decomposing gelatinous mass of stink of what used to be a whale…. Dirty seabirds sat like vultures on its putrid surface, full to bursting on the brown oozing blubber….

But soldier the fuck on sonny boy, we didn’t come here to fuck spiders, get a line in the water…The fish were obviously aggregating on this slimy food mass, with the small bait being attracted to it, and so obviously followed by the bigger nunus… as we know, if its floating out in the middle of the ocean, 99 times out of a 100 there is gonna be something on it..  I climbed to the bow ( furthest from the whale funk ) and shot out a cast with a small sinking stick bait… The boat who’d called us were about 40 metres away and as I was retrieving I heard them shout to Sean ” Bait… fuckers are on the bait”… Yeah yeah yeah.. fucking bait… But hey, they’d called us over, had a ton of fish on board already, so who was I to argue… especially seeing as one of them was tight on a fish…

Fuck it, we’d had a slow day, I guess I can fish bait if that’s what it takes… One more cast on the stick bait and I’ll switch over.. Jack had started a chum trail straight away and I looked down into the chum line just as I released my cast and had to make a double take… What the fuck is that…. A flash of bright yellow cruising in the chum… a BIG flash of yellow… but hang on, that’s not Tuna..

My stick bait had sunk for about 15 seconds at this point and I started working it back fast, half an eye on it, and half an eye on the chum trail where these shadows were forming… just as my stick bait broke the surface on the retrieve the water underneath it exploded and I was tight and my little Stella 5000 was emptying itself at a rate of knots… A brand new rod in my hands, an awesome little high end Japanese weapon , on only its second cast, it was now bent, and attached to something going the other way….

While I was battling with this beast, feeling VERY happy about having gone tight on a stick bait, and feeling that while I wasn’t under gunned, I was walking close to the line, which is kinda where you wanna be with a fish, one of the other fellas went tight on bait and Stand up gear…. a short and brutal tussle ensued, with him and I playing under over a few times, and soon resulted in Jack sticking a gaff headshot to a 15 kilo Yellowtail… 15 Kilo Yellowtail…. IN Cape Town? Not Struisbaai, not Port Edward, not Port Elizabeth…Fucking Cape Town.. Fuck!

Looking down we saw there were more in the chum, and whilst I spent the next 25 minutes pissing around still attached to whatever had eaten my stick bait, the boys proceeded to stick another 3 on board…

Hoping like hell I was tied into one of these mossy backed Yellowtailed beasts, I soon realised that the speed and determination of whatever I’d hooked couldn’t be one of these Tail… had to be a Yellowfin… another 5 minutes and Jack stuck the steel into the head of a 25 odd kilo Yellowfin… Stoked as hell I was… a pretty epic fish on 20lb gear, and a magical way to christen a new slight stick… and on the Stickbait too.. lovely..

By now we’d drifted off the Brown Submarine and made our way back and got to it again… Grant managed to get his Baptism of fire on Tuna, getting into a boxing Match with a 30 kilo yellowfin on Stand Up that had him round the boat a time or two, and one of the other fellas pinned a 48 kilo Yellowfin also on the stand up…Grant even manned up to the hilt and ate the heart of his first tuna… still pumping raw and all.. video footage to prove it..

Sean and I were JUICED up on these big Yellowtail, and Sean soon grabbed his spinning stick, rigged a small bait and in it went and tight!

I followed suit shortly thereafter, having sold my soul to Satan, I’d clipped off the Stickbait, stuck on a smallish bare hook, threaded on a chunk of Pilchard and “sight fished” to a big Yellowtail cruising in the chum line… pitched it… he cruised up to it, and sucked it down like a smart… bail was open.. let him turn, run a couple metres, clicked over and tight! Got you fucker.. Yellowtail are my favourite fish I think… they do everything right, they push all my buttons, they turn me the fuck on, and they piss me off like nothing else.. they are the perfect fish… But I’ve only ever caught little fellas that are common here in the Cape… being tied to a 15 kilo Yellowtail, on 20lb spin gear was heaven… which after about 5 minutes, with my trophy no more than 10 metres from the boat on the surface… sun lighting up that golden yellow tail and fins, turned to hell as my line went slack…. Fuck fuck fuck… reeled in and inspected my knot… Wore through the loop… I cursed myself because I know that leader material, which I love, is shit for loop knots… in my haste to get a hook on and in the water, in autopilot mode, I’d tied a loop knot… Gone was my trophy…

Fuck it… another hook, a new knot, a new bait and get the fuck out there… wash rinse repeat… Not long I was tight again… thinking this was my redemption on the Yellowtail, I soon realised it was not to be as I’d let this bait sink deeper out of sight as the Tail were now boat shy, I didn’t see the eat and recognised the blistering pace of our good friend Mr.Yellowfin…. Not a bad second prize… While I was tussling, Grant had the good fortune of flipping his chunk out in front of a lit up Dorado which proceeded to put on the expected aerial and “Holy fuck look at those colours” show, before meeting its maker on board and going for a little lie down in the ice box…

As fate would have it, my yellowfin got burnt off on one of the other lines on board that was hooked up on one of the endless barrage of blue sharks that ended badly for me… ping…

With 5 x yellowfin on board, a nice Dorrie, and 3 beautiful 15 kilo class Yellowtail landed, but not a single one for me, we called it quits and hit the road… flatter following seas meant an easy ride home, MiThyme taking it all in her stride…

Yellow Submarines? Fuck those things…