On my recent trip to Wavecrest Hotel in the Transkei I was fishing mostly with paddletails, but I spent a bit of time fishing with bait as well.

My Dad, at the age of 81, is a bait fisherman, who loves targeting edibles from the rocks.

Standing next to him on the rocks waiting for a bite gave us plenty of time to chat, and amongst the various wisdoms imparted, he told me how much he would love to catch his favourite fish, a musselcracker.

He has caught many of these hard fighting fish over the years, usually pulling them out of some of the foulest, rocky areas on the coast. I have always admired his patience in waiting for that big bite and his perseverance, sticking to his mission, even when the bites aren’t coming.

During the first few days of our trip the water was cold and green, tides also weren’t ideal as we were in the neap tide period. Bites were few and far between and the fish that we caught were generally pretty small. Included were blacktail, bronze bream, stone bream and galjoen. During this period I fished with a light rig and used a small circle hook, baited with soft baits such as a chokka blob bait with some prawn shell beaten into it, or red bait. The small circle hook was deadly with the resident rock species.

A few days later that all changed. As we got into the beginning of spring tides there was a south westerly wind, which cleaned up the water, turned it a better, blue colour and warmed it up somewhat. The sea looked a lot better and we decided to spend a bit of time specifically targeting musselcrackers with some bigger baits and heavier gear.

I had brought along my Penn Slammer 6500, loaded with 80lb Berkley Black Velvet braid. I had attached a 2m leader of 100lb fluorocarbon to this with a PR knot. I had this reel on a Penn Battalion Popping rod, which is only 7’8” long, but has plenty of pulling power. In the area that we were fishing I only needed a very short cast, and there was also no real need for high clearance, for this reason I decided to go with a short rod, with lots of pulling power. I had pulled some pretty big tuna and GT’s on this outfit, so I was confident that it could handle anything thrown at it in the surf.

My Dad and I sat side by side on a rock, with big baits out for cracker. We had struggled to find crabs, so we had collected some tough chitons from beneath the rocks and baited up with those. They were tough enough to be safe from the marauding blacktails, and we could wait for a shoal of crackers to move into the bay with our baits intact.

It took around 45 minutes for the first bite. My Dad’s rod went flat, and he hit hard and the bend stayed in his rod. He was on! Drag set tight, he did battle, finally leading the fish through the rocks in front of us and landing a very decent cracker of approximately 7kg’s.

I could see the elation written all over his face as he carried the fish and put it into a rock pool.

As I turned back to face the sea I felt a bump on my line and then my rod went down fast and hard. Braid magnifies every bite and with a cracker bite it is quite an experience with non-stretch line!

With my drag cranked down totally and my heavy leader up front, the fish had no chance of reefing me. It put up some serious resistance amongst the rocks, but I was able to guide it in and use a wave to carry it up onto the ledge where I could reach it. I saw immediately that it had a big, broad head.

Mine turned out to be about 10kg’s. While not a giant by musselcracker standards, it is a very decent fish for that particular area.

The memory of that morning will stay with my Dad and I as long as we live. Not only the catching of the fish and the special time together, but releasing those two magnificent fish together and watching them disappear into the foamy water to go and rejoin their shoal.