Ive sold my tow vehicle so took out a mates boat yesterday, an awesome little 17ft outfit with twin f90's Suzuki's.
We filled up the live-bait tank with around 40 mackerel before heading out to target kingfish, unfortunately they just didn't want to play so off we headed another 20k in search of dolphin fish. Along the way we came across a pod of Risso dolphins which are quite rare for us to see (only seen them once before).
We soon started hooking a few small undersized dolphin fish so my daughter and mate decided to see if they could find bigger ones in the water. Normally once in the water you can soon pick out a few bigger fish but not this time. So with that we headed inshore a little to search for kingfish in the water.
The first spot I dropped them at there were some solid fish which my daughter didn't take a shot at (she likes to chose her fish carefully and go for kill shots. The next couple of drifts were without fish so we moved to another spot.
Wasn't long before they came across a large group of grey nurse sharks and an unusual turtle (still trying to id). At this point I was in the boat and my daughter was about 30-40m from the boat when a small 10ft great white jumped from the water chasing a fish straight at her. Just to be safe I hammered the engines straight to her to get between her and the shark, typical to her she still didn't want to get back onboard.
Still with no fish for the dinner table we decided to head back offshore in search of dolphin fish again. This we found a patch of dolphin fish but they just didn't seem interested in eating anything but they would follow lures and live-bait around the back of the boat. With that my daughter jumped in and soon speared a few solid dolphin fish for dinner.
All of a sudden the water erupted as a school of pilchards moved into the dolphin fishes domain, this was our chance to at last catch a few on the rods. With triple hook-ups and fish bursting all over the surface it wasn't long before my daughter hooked into a large bull, after 15mins of fight the hook pulled free and the fish got to live another day. All up a fun day out.
Jon
