In the distance I could see a small flock of birds diving into the water, so I slowly trolled north towards them. The Garmin sounder turned red and just as we drove over a large school of bait, two of the reels started screaming. I love the way that when a Shimano Tiagra goes off, the sound vibrates through the …

With this in mind, we decided to also use a couple of Rapala X-Rap 20+ lures in Red Head colour because the latest Grubbsta skirts are a lot lighter so you can troll them at a much lower speed, which gives you the opportunity to use a combination of hard-bodies and skirts. We were lucky we decided to troll the …

With the fish now in range, I placed the gaff under the fish, lifted it into the Esky and quickly closed the lid. Dolphinfish have a habit of going absolutely crazy when you lift them into the boat, and there is a real likelihood that a flying hook could penetrate a leg or arm, so placing the fish into the confined …

You may have noticed the vast majority of smart passengers will fight for the seat at the very rear of the boat because this is where the ride is smoothest. So when it came to configuration, I made it very clear I needed a big side console. The seating position on a centre console is still forward, which makes for …

  I received my boat about four weeks prior to writing this article, and even though my Savwinch was installed and ready to go, I hadn’t used it until a very recent trip. I was sitting in 65m of rather sloppy water. The wind had increased to almost 20 knots and the swell was about 1m, which made it difficult to fish …

After about five minutes I managed to regain most of my line and finally lifted the fish off the bottom, but it was almost as determined to stay near the bottom as I was to get it to the top. It must have been 10 minutes later when we finally saw some colour and I became really excited. About 3m …