Cape Verde 2013 - Sal

Sal

End of august 2013, because we did like Cape Verde two years ago and we didn't feel like a long distance flight, we decided to go back again. This time we chose the island of Sal, one of the 9 islands of Cape Verde. We checked it at the RIU Garopa all-inclusive resort and of course I couldn’t wait to check out the circumstances on the beach.

It all seemed a little more touristic compared to Boa Vista, but next morning around 5 o'clock I grabbed my fishing gear and went out. It was a bummer finding out that the hotel beach gate was closed, so I checked out the escaping possibilities. I found a climbable piece of wall and started "prison break"! On top of the wall, a sharp beam of light burned my sleepy eyes out. A guard was staring at me pointing his flashlight. "Morning!", I said and after he replied with "morning", I jumped of the wall on to the beach in a still black night. After a couple of minutes walking to the sea, I heard a nasty kind of growling in the dark and it was surrounding me. It seemed to be a pack of dogs, you could only see the glowing of their eyes. I walked up to the alpha male and started comforting him and did some cuddling. Soon, all the dogs were pushing each other away to get my attention. They followed me to the fishing spot and layed down against me, fishing no option, dog spa opened. When I saw a turtle protection quad driving by, the dogs went after it! Instead of catching a lot of fish on lures like in Boa Vista, I only caught one little razor fish on a Rapala. Every other attempt ended in a blank. Fishing with shrimp that I got from the hotel kitchen got very good results. It was easy to catch some bait fish to try catching shark later on.

In the first week we got no shark bites. In the second week we were fishing at night, Simone caught a lot of baitfish, some nice jacks and beautiful maigre, with gold spots on its head! Any further attempts on black tip had no success. We also booked a charter for 4 hours big game fishing. Although Cape Verde is one of the best big game locations in the world, we didn't have any luck. The fish didn't want to hook up. We got in an enormous school of yellowfin tuna and trolled through it , around it, anything possible, but they didn't take our bait.
Highlight of the trip was seeing a whale shark and a very big sea turtle next to the boat.

Next day we started walking along the beach near the waterline, and after a mile or so, something came to my attention. I saw just before the curve that the beach made, a big half circle in the shore. I figured that two currents were bumping into each other, creating some kind of washing machine. This spot must provide a lot of food for the fish, all that comes along with the current, as well as the ones hidden in the bottom sand. I marked the spot by walking into land, and where the beach stopped I marked the location with some wood and stones. Now I was able to find this spot in the dark and so I did that night. Around midnight I jumped the wall again and followed the edge of the beach till I found the mark. Heading straight to the sea I used a rig that keeps the chunk of fish of the ground. A while later I felt something hitting the bait and the line fell loose, it was coming towards me. After a very thrilling drill, a nice black tip reef shark landed on the beach. In the remaining days we would catch another two black tips, and lost another five. Sal is really great for fishing with bait, lure fishing is really no good up here. You can book trips at the hotel for shark fishing on the other side of the island, rods and stuff included.

Tight lines.
Lee