Thank you to Koos Pretorius on Gee Spot I have some lovely photos of the morning’s early launch to share.

Today turned out to be very exciting. At 09:45 Indigo called in a hook-up halfway between the Alphards and 45s. They fought until 10:10 when a stripey was measured and released.

At 11:17 Hannes Schreuder on Mojo, closer towards The Alphards, hooked a stripey and released it at 11:57

While I was waiting for the last boats to return to shore I received a call to please go to the end of the harbour wall to capture a very special photograph. Gareth Beaumont had promised to allow himself to be towed back to the harbour on a surfboard if their boat caught a marlin. And of course, they did.

Today is Valentine’s Day and although most of the anglers are without their wives and girlfriends we all celebrated the day. The bar ladies made a special effort.

Dinner tonight was a delicious mussel soup followed by battered swordfish and salmon fishcakes and for dessert, we were treated to decadent chocolate eclairs.

I am trying to get as many group photos as possible and will post these in a future post. I am also collecting the anglers’ stories so watch this space to read about their exciting experiences catching and releasing the hard-to-catch marlin!

I cannot resist posting a few photos not quite related to the fishing. Struisbaai harbour is famous for some very special residents, namely the Short-tailed Stingrays and the Cape Clawless Otters. You can read about Parrie, our most famous stingray here

I have lived in Struisbaai for almost eight years and have never seen the otters but today although it was quite busy at the harbour one of them was there swimming with the stingrays.