New Cal Adventure

[Stan Konstantaras]

First off guys let me say a big thanks to all of the regulars who made my foray into GT fishing quite easy. Have trolled these pages for a year, my education needed a graduation ceremony that involved actually tangling with a decent GT. First post but long time site visitor. Hats off to you, believe it or not after 40 years of fishing around traps I am still learning heaps.

After arming ourselves to the teeth, we headed over for 6 days with LPB. All the pictures of New Cal that I have seen involved sun and idyllic conditions...........arriving in 30 knots and rain was not my cup of tea, especially when David from LPB calls us at the hotel to run us over to his tackle shop for a coffee and says " we must talk about the forecast".
Not good. Wind all week was not tipped to drop under 20 knots, so we cancelled Day 1 and sat back and waited for another phone call. Day 2 phone call, "wind is 25 knots, seas 3 meters and rain, do you still want to go...?" Hell yes! Be mindful of the fact that LBP were happy to cancel the charter and have us not pay a cent, no fish no pay, it was our call totally.
Out we head for 5 days fishing. I must say first up that for 5 days it rained and did not blow under 20 - 25 knots, but we caught fish. We raised 20 day one and landed 8, in conditions that made standing up pretty hard. That set the tone for the week, try to find some shelter, catch fish, eat sleep and repeat. The Skipper, David and Sebastian worked their butts off trying, and even though we managed 20 odd fish to 35kg, we lost a bigger number of fish in the 40 - 45kg mark. Short strikes, missed hookups, one massive bust up on 130lb, bite offs. Even though I only pulled out of 1 fish all week, it was 40 plus. That hurt.
Apart from the usual other mix of popper eating fish which kept us on our toes, the GT strikes and hook ups were amazing to see.
Great service, great company, going back as soon as possible...
Thanks for the tips,
Cheers
stan

[Peter Morris]

Onya Stan,
You wont remember me mate but I have met you a few times years ago at the South Sydney club.
I lived in Sydney for 28yrs and was a mamber of the club for a short time....and came to a few meetings.

Anyway, good to see you got onto some.
Certainly beats catching Niggers around Sydney...

Pete

[Jay Burgess]

Well done mate, made the best of crappy conditions. Good onya 

[Luke Wyrsta]

Good to see you finally got your Fisherman rods into action.

Another NC/LPB fanatic in the making 

[Nathan Cefai]

Good work stan,what fisherman rod are you using there ? The wind may make it uncomfortable to fish at times but it also can be good for GT popping at times..I fish a few strong windy days there and the GTs fired with many big fish and bust offs!!!

Good work mate,any by catches ??

[Laurent Thiriet]

hi!

sorry for the bad forecast, it is so beautifful when the sun is shinning

but i made really good fishing parties in bad weather conditions
my boat is 4m50 long with center console, imagine, quite wet a frozen at the end of the windy days
the come back looks like a rodeo party

but we go back again and again

[Stan Konstantaras]

Hi Guys,
Yes, weather was "challenging".
Another convert in the making, cheers Luke. Time to take out 3rd mortgage..
Rods were GT Monster RS, the boys said I needed the RSH, but I had two RS with me just in case 125kg leaning on 130lb became a bit to extreme and I snapped one of them. Suffice to say they survived.
I cant say enough about the LPB crew, they were disappointed with the weather but did a great job.
Bycatch ranged from barracuda, spaniards, a few missed doggies, red bass, jacks, gold spot trevs and a diamond trevally.
The boys got excited about this on a popper, but we blew it off. After 10 trips to Cape York the diamond trevs and not new to us.
The weather everyday in the last picture, and Laurent I imagine its great when the sun is out!
Cheers
stan

ps: Hiya Pete, South Sydney club now at 260 members and growing! i'll Pm you with some details on the new ANSA lurecasting division details and an offer for some tags to put in your GTs if you want.

[Chris Young]

Hi Stan...congrats on making the most of the trip mate. I see a camcorder in one of the shots mate, did you get any footage you can share with us.
I also see a Full Scale Kong 200 in the first pic  Is the second pic of the same fish?

Cheers

Crusty

[Brad.Bell]

great stuff
looks the goods thats for sure

[Nathan Cefai]

Stan,how do you like the seven seas gimble ?

[Stan Konstantaras]

Hi Chris,
Nailed 5 fish on the 200g Full Scale Kong, great lure and one of the tips I picked up from the boys on the site. Had this color and blue wiggle, worked great. Also used Jai Fish Head and Squidpen. In fact out of the 40 plus lures I had, these three were my go to lures. Also happy to say that all came from FishHead. I do have a bunch of others I want to try, but these

One thing that was funny was that David from LPB commented that I had rigged the squidpen wrong, eyes at the front ( see I told you I was new) but now I was even more determined to use it as I had rigged it, something about stubborn Aussie vs Frenchy. Now as a floating lure, rigged backwards it actually nose dives and rolls seductively up to a foot under the water, it looked great and caught 5 fish, including a 30kg fish, you could almost work it as a subsurface suspender. One thing for sure I reckon it will work on our south coast kings, its wounded baitfish imitation action is mindblowing.

One thing I was amazed at is that the bloop cannot be BIG enough, big learning curve for me and the Kong and the Jai worked well for me.
Right now there are a couple of Kongs retired to the Pool Room!
We did film a little bit, but most time was spent throwing poppers. Like all trips it takes on a year or two before you sit back and start doing some filming.

Seven seas belt was good to use, but moved around a bit when you use the side gimbals
Cheers
Stan

[Kasey Leong]

Funny that, every time I have been there it has been mostly blowing below 5 knots and we actually do a dance each night hoping for 15 knot winds.

Uncomfortable to fish, but boy does it draw the big ones up. They seem to love surfin' those swells.

25+ will make things a bit difficult though...

[Chris Young]

Stan...Funny you talk about big bloops mate. I've got a couple of new models heading over to the boys that should give them all the bloops they want
Glad you got onto a few on the Kongs mate. I'll send you a PM.

Cheers

Crusty

[Sam Conacher]

some nice GT'S there Stan.

hopefully we all will get some bigger and better one's when we return again soon.

[Sam Conacher]

Hi Guys.

I was on this trip with Stan and he pretty much said what i was going to say in all honesty.

hear are some photos of my self from the trip and i was hoping for some bigger GT'S then what i got but hopefully that will happen on the 2nd trip to NC soon. Anyway it was a good trip all up with many more GT Popping trip's to come.