Angola Tournament 24hrs of Club NAVAL January 29th/30th

[Pargo Man]

Dear SEALINERS,

holidays are over and the 4th of 8 IGFA Qualifier events needs to be disputed ;-)) January 29th and 30th we'll fight for glory, honour and respect of the flotilla.

Yesterday 20 Teams signed on for the "Bone Crusher". What's so different: We are allowed to leave port at 06h00 sharp and no lines out is declared. At 18h00 sharp we have to be in the NAVAL club anchorage to check in our t&r video footage and eventual capture for the weigh-in. Do this two days in a row and get pretty exhausted... The open bar and a bufett dinner after the last weigh in should be most welcome then ;-))

Weather, two day before new moon will be tough on all athletes. Chop and even thunderstorm can be expected.

As usually, we will ride the sturdy little "Djamila2" onto the shelf and see what the 80plus water can hold for us. Mighty Kwanza River pumps weeds in large quantities, so a "visit" to those floating island might be an option. Last year we lost a fäääääät marlin on first day, but managed to tag a sail on Sunday. Let's see what we've learnt since then!

Report to follow!

You All, Have a super weekend.

 

[Pargo Man]

450 liters fuel... 260nm across the shelf... every day up at 04h00 and casting off at 06h00... 18h00 back in port for the weigh in... and green water all the way to the horizon.

19 Teams took to the sea, one retired early on Saturday after a torn knee ligament of one of the team members (we wish him a quick recovery) and capture was a bit meagre on the billfish. The greenish water only ended some 50 miles out and some teams opted for the whole distance.

Tubaroes, Tudo Fish and PeixFree found the Marlin bite and came in on the podium.

Tubaroes added hefty dorados and a wahoo to complete their tally and win the Mexico IGFA world championship ticket.

"Bycatchers" Caipirinheiros come 4th. Malta da Kianda 5th (well over 100 kgs of dorados and a jack crevalle).

We found a productive rip in the South, where the Rio Kwanza waters mix with the Atlantic. Saturday we saw a sail jump, but alegedly he was trying to get rid of parasites... so no bite. Eventually, a marlin came to steal our ballyhoo swarm teaser spreader bar!! Again, no interest in lures or naturals...

 

[fedu]

First congrats on the 5th place.

Talked with Marco from Tubaroes on Sat when they got the wahoo and got the feeling they knew something more.

Most of the Dorado we caught this weekend were well above 10Kg, Luanda seems to be "infested" with them and this year in good size.

On Sunday went out for an hour and noticed water conditions were better, you guys made the right call geting what was avaliable.

 

[fedu]

Tubaroes went 70 miles out!!!

The Kwanza islands we had fished together last weekend on the 20 miles mark where there!!!!

 

[Pargo Man]

Ahoy Fernando, thanks for your kind words. Indeed, we should be happy about the 5th place. Saturday we had two dorries, Sachas 12kgs on ballyhoo, mine 9kgs on a popper! Nice stuff that, all the capture way down South after we found a weed line off Palmeirinhas.

 

Sunday we tried to return to the spot we had left the day before. Chop was garstly and the line had spread out. Around mid day we found a rip about 15 miles off Palmeirinhas. "Terlicos" had the same idea, quickly got themselves humonguous dorados in the 15 plus calibre, while we caught a Jack Crevalle on a small Williamson "Cojote"; later the day Team "Dragoes" Federation President Doc Fefe on the helm turned up too.

 

We had quite a variation of species: dorados, blue runner, jack crevalle and a 5kgs tunny. The most fun part was the spreader bar getting nicked by that marlin… hadn’t see anything like it before... only thing missing was a good yellowfin or a billfish bite!

Here is Capirinheiros K.O. and Cdre Xico shaking hands.

 

[Pargo Man]

Probably the best part was the good practice we all got in the cockpit. The four anglers all had to go to their lines 4 or 5 times. For every bite we removed the two teaser lines, 6 50/80 lbs combos and lifted the riggers up. That's a routine we rarely find time to exercise... Should the marlin bite come, I think we can have all lines out of the way and follow the fish within 90 seconds...

The 60-80 miles distance from shore obvisouly is for the modern boats in the fleet. Consider some teams actually had no bite at all, we feel we had committed well to our enar shore target area. For the fast long rangers the water was crystal clear out there, very nice indeed, what I could see from the proof video footage of Tubaroes and Tudo Fish.

Marcos fish was a beast!! Really big and full of power! Here's the man!

 

[fedu]

I think this was their route.

They made me an incredible description over the phone of hundreds of birds, too many Dorado under the islands at the point that they had to try avoid them otherwize their bait would have finished.

Tunas also but not eating and of course the two Marlins but they only managed to land one.


They told me it was the exact same "islands" that they had seen last weekend when we went out together

And Marco & Co saw (and caught) lots of Dorado around the same size of last weekend

 

[tremosso]

Hey Jan your experience for non-bill seems to produce, even a 5th place, which is extremely good.

We spoke about this many times, as the range of the boat is limited... I'm glad to know you guys are capable of fishing for the "smaller" species with results on the championship table.

I can´t come here and read your posts or Fedu's... can you imagine how I feel? eheheh

Congrats to Malta!

 

[Pargo Man]

pls advise timely on your travel itinerary for March.

We still got to figure out how to get DJ2 to Lobito. I'm still dreaming of doing it on her own sturdy keel! Wanna come along? Silly question!

I do need the helmsman for the third shift!!