I've loved fishing for as long as I can remember, but the first time I was properly introduced to deep-sea fishing was on that trip to Plett I’ve already told you about — the one with the Bateman family — where Sam’s uncle, Rob Muller, took me out nearly every day to troll for gamefish along the Plettenberg Bay coast. I absolutely loved it.
So one of the very first things I bought when I started getting paid by Spargo’s was a Penn 500 Jigmaster — a classic deep-sea reel for the princely sum R60. Not one of those bulky jobs, just a clean, solid, beautifully made reel — and I still have it to this day. In August 1986, I was off to visit my dad in Mallorca again, and this time I was determined to give proper deep-sea fishing in the Mediterranean a go — something I’d never done there because my dad was, frankly, completely disinterested in fishing. Where I got my love for it from, I have no idea.
I had a little telescopic rod — not exactly a high-quality match for the Jigmaster — and I’d also bought a Rapala CD18. Now that’s a big-ass lure — about 20 centimetres long with a hefty metal lip. When you troll it behind a boat, it dives down, and it's rigged with two serious treble hooks: one on the belly and one at the tail.
Armed with that kit, I arrived in Mallorca. It took some persuading, but eventually I got my dad to agree to a proper offshore fishing mission. At the time, his boat — Bag of Trix, a 35-foot Chris-Craft — was berthed at Santa Ponça. And one perfect August day, not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind, the sea flat as glass, we set off from Santa Ponça and headed straight out to the deep sea.
Normally, my dad just liked to cruise along the coast, anchor in little bays, ogle the topless girls, maybe swim ashore for lunch — that was his idea of a good day out. But this day, with my stubborn determination and complete unwillingness to take no for an answer, we were on a mission — or at least I was. My dad had absolutely no belief that there was anything worth catching in the Mediterranean. He said to me, “Don’t you realise this place is totally fished out?”
I said, “Yeah, well, let’s just try.”
I’m pretty sure Briony was on board, along with either a male friend of hers or of Sally’s — I can’t quite remember. Anyway, after we’d gone really far out — probably 20 kilometres offshore — I let out the CD18. Normally, you’d troll with maybe 20 or 30 metres of line, but I wanted that lure down deep, so I let out at least 100, maybe 150 metres of line. That would’ve had it tracking somewhere between 5and 10 metres below the surface.
We kept trolling along, my dad holding seven or eight knots, and then all of a sudden — bang — the reel screams. We’d hooked something.
“Fish on!” I screamed ecstatically.
My dad to killed the engines while I grabbed the rod and started to reel in.
At first, it felt like I’d hooked the bottom — no head shakes, no life on the end of the line. Just dead weight. So I cranked up the drag (mistake) and started doing the old pump-and-wind routine — lower the rod, haul, reel. It was 30-pound line, and I was gaining, slowly. No fight. No movement. Just resistance.
After about fifteen minutes, my dad said, “You’ve hooked a big basura bag,” which is Spanish for garbage bag. And I’ll admit, at that point, I was inclined to agree with him.
But the weird thing was the angle of the line — it was coming in really deep, basura bags don´t swim down when they are snagged. And we were in at least two kilometres of water. It was impossible to have hooked the bottom.
Then, all of a sudden — Newton’s Third Law — this thing comes alive. Whatever it was, it rockets away from me, and the reel just shrieks. Line screams out in seconds. Snap.
Gone. What a sickening feeling.
I just stood there, stunned. And then, maybe a hundred metres away, we saw this enormous splash — not a fish jumping, we'd missed that, but clearly the re-entry of something enormous probably trying to throw the hook.
My dad and I looked at each other, speechless. We knew we’d had something big on the line. To this day, I have no idea what it was. My best guesses are bluefin tuna or swordfish. But honestly? I think it was so big it didn’t even realise it was hooked — not until it got close to the boat and decided to swim in the opposite direction. Even if the line hadn't broken, due to my overtightening of the drag, my chances of actually landing a fish of that size was the kit I had would probably have been slim to nothing.
After that, I was obsessed. For the rest of the holiday, I had my poor dad trolling all over Mallorca — different lures, different depths — and bless him, he indulged me. But we never hooked another thing.
That moment still lives in me. I’ve thought about it often. And when I got back to South Africa, I actually carved my own Rapala-style lures out of jelutong wood. I still have one of them, and they weren’t half bad, if I do say so myself — especially from a craftsmanship point of view.
Anyway, that’s the story of the one that got away — Mallorca, 1986.