On a choppy sea we headed out to our favourite fishing spots in the hope of getting siome decent fish to kick of the summer season. Our main target species was black musselcracker aka poenskop aka black steenbras. These hardy fighters are difficult to catch as they tend to make a beeline straight for their holes once hooked, but we had a chance to visit their favourite hangout and was not going to let that slip by.

Reza was quickly on to one of these magnificent fish and managed to haul one of around 6kg into the boat. This was his first ever black musselracker and he was smiling very broadly. A few small bronzies paid us a visit and then it was Reza who was on again with another stunning fish, this time a black musselcracker of around 8kg. His smile just turned a few cm's wider!

Using a 5 O hook and chokka bait it was Reza again whose line suddenly started to peel of his reel at an alarming rate. No matter how hard he tried he could not turn the fish and the first 15 minutes was a ding dong battle with the fish taking more and more line before he eventually stopped, and then the real battle began. For the next 30 minutes the fight ranged all around the boat, from lft to right and front and back. He had his leader line on the reel no less than 6 times just to see it being stripped away again.

After 40 minutes of very hard fighting we finally spotted the fish - a mal ragged tooth shark estimatd between 180 and 200 kg's. It took another 10 minutes to bring the fish to the gaff and release the hook, whereafter the shark was also released to swim away unharmed.

It was then the turn of Marius, back after a few months in the USA, to see the line speeding of his new Penn reel. With his rod bending at an alarming rate he put a big effort in and after 15 minutes of hard fighting we saw a flash of silver in the water and immediately knew he was hooked into a very big silver cob.

He played the fish very well and after another five minutes the gaff went to work and a stunning con of almost 27kg was boated and safely put into the fish hatch. More smiles all around for a personal best catch.

The trip back was very wet and bumpy but definitely worth every drop of seawater after another awesome day at sea.