Kayak Fishing South Africa - uMkomass

Hi to all!!!
I'm in South Africa now, waiting for the world cup, and meanwhile, trying to get some kayak fishing.
Before i came here, I've made contact to a local kayak fisherman, Mick Clarke, who invited me to join him for some kayak fishing trips. He has a lovely guest house right over the bay, and just infront of Aliwal Shaol, one of Africa's best reefs. June's supposed to be the month when the great "Sardine Run" happens. That's that huge shoals of sardined you see on National Geographic, followed by Dolphins, Tunas, Whales, Sharks and other pelagic predators.
When I got to the area of Durban, I gave him a call. He said that the sardines havn't arrived yet, but that I'm more than welcome to join him for a day or two.
Day 1:
I arrived first thing in the morning, and we had all the equipment ready - a couple of Stealth kayaks (Evo 465 for me, and BFS for him).

A wonderfull sunrise wellcomed me at my first morning in the Indian Ocean (not counting Eilat):

The plan was to use Sabiki rigs to catch live bait (Red eye Sardines), and to use them to catch something bigger....

It was quite easy - you drop the sabiki and get 3-4 sardines at a time. We hooked them by the nose with a medium treble hook, released some line and waited...
Suddenly we saw some dolphins:

I was very excited just becasue we don't get to see them so closely, but Mick was excited because Dolphins means that Tuna come with them. A few minutes later I got a pull on my line, managed to look back and see a splash, reeled in, just to see that my bait got bitten behind the back, but the hook not taken. A few seconds later, and Mick got a strong pull and started working.

it looked like something big, but it went towards the Shark nets and got entangled in them, Mick believed it was a nice YellowFin Tuna (25+).
Mick fighting the fish at sunrise:

After that the fish dissapeared. We kept on getting bait fish, among them some bottom fish like Goatfish:

Trigger fish:

And a kind of Farida:

We drifted away like that, and further south we saw what they call Bonitos (but are Tuniut), jumping at the surface. We got close and Mick was trying to cast jigs at them. I went on with the live bait, caught some and rigged one on Mick's hook. It didn't take more than a minute when his reel sang again. It was quite a fight and at the end he landed a nice 4-5 kg Tunit.

After that, Mick got a bit nervous, as we drifted far south, so we switched to Rapalas and trolled back to shore:

In the afternoon, Mick went fishing with his Jetski, going deep near the Aliwal reef. He used Tunit as live bait and caught a huge Wahoo, more than 25kg:

Obviuosly I was very anxious to see what's gonna happen the next day...

Day 2:
We've ,met a bit earlier and met couple of other kayakers who went out - Stewart, the surfing specialist and Mike, a 72 years old dude.
I took pictures of Mike at sunrise:

The plan was the same, fishing for live bait and then hook them. This time we went a little north, but the sea wasn't as good as the day before - it looked too quiet and indeed, part of some bait and bottom fish nothing touched our bait.

At some point I reeled back my bait, just to find out that only the head remained:

After a while, Mick got a pull - he started fighting and after aminute guessed it's a shark - by the nature of the pulls.

Five minutes later came to the surface a beautifull, gracefull, baby hammerhead shark:

That was it for today...

Hope to get back to Mick's place later for the sardine run.
I have a couple of videos need to be edited, I hope to upload them later.
Have fun you all,
Ido