Was out today for over 12hrs on Nauticat doing a fishing college course, sea was pretty flat most of the day starting with a SW and some rain, then moving to a SW and finally a NE for the afternoon.
We mangaged to land 3 Dorado and dropped one Yellowfin Tuna, which dropped the lure and then cam back to pick it up. The 3rd Dorado was also interesting as is hit both riggers and the shotgun before finally comitting to the RH corner, and we all saw it happing as its dorsal fin was out the water.
Deeper out the water was 25.4-25.9deg.C but there was a very strong S-N current for most the day and virtually no sparats or flying fish around, I noticed and lot of activity on the sounder at about 300m deep when were running along the 400m contour, and saw fish there down deep, think they were feeding on the prawns and we could not raise them.
On the way back in we hooked up into a Brown Marlin who took our lure on the shot gun. At first I thought we had a Marlin on as after the reel went mad, I turned around and saw a massive splash on the water and very quickly around 400m of line was out and the reel was still spooling, eventually we managed to hold him for a while and slowley began to gain line, and so a the fight continued for about 30min, when the fish went deep and after another 10 min we managed to start raising the fish, when he saw the boat he ran again and after a few times of this happening we started gaining control..
Eventually after about an hour I was able to grab hold of the leader and too my surprise, the was a 200Kg plus Zambezi Shark (Bull Shark) at the end of our Kona. It fought just like a Marlin and took a lot of line fast, and even did a jump which I missed only to see the splash. I was about to hold him by the jaws with the gaff to remove the hook when the 7/0 mustad SS Big game hook snapped.
When I first realised it was a Shark, my first thoughts were Mako or maybe Blacktip, I was astonished once I saw it clearly as this was definately a very very large Zambezi.
