Hi Guys,
thanks for your kind comments.
Dave - jigs wise we predominantly use 200 gram jigs, whilst also using 150 & 300 gram jigs fairly regularly as well.. short jigs perform better than long jigs - to be honest the jigs which do the business consistently here are Sea Rock and Orion jigs, the Hart weepy jigs also are pretty good. More expensive will work, but when you lose 3-4/day to spanish mackeral/shark etc, i prefer to stick to the less expensive options..! Hooks: Fisherman Spinoza 12/0, Decoy cutlass 8/0 and Shout kudako 7/0 are all good choices. Colours: mackeral, sardine, green back, pink, pearl - all work well - pearl and the pink in lower light conditions.. Retrieve - i am no specialist, but short jerks in general, pauses help as often the fish seemed to hit on the 'pause'..
Jay - thanks for the species ID - nice to know, i had really no idea other than i thought it was related to the smaller blood snapper in another photo..! She went back, so the sampling of the flesh quality will have to wait until the next trip..!
Andy - I have to say i loved the Amberjack rods, my only one gripe was the handle are a little too long for me - give me a Nirai handle on a Spinoza amberjack blank and it would be perfect.! Actually, a friend is currently in the process of taking a couple of inches off the bottom of his rod, and re-mounting the gimbal etc - looking forward to seeing the results..! Jig weights - well, they handles 150-300 gram jigs no problem - cant really comment about larger than that as we didnt go any heavier.. The flex in the tip makes it very easy to work the jig in my view. PE line - one was fishing varivas big one PE 6 (85lb) on a 10K and the other varivas 10X10 PE8 (112lb) on an expo reel - it did fine to be honest - i ahve to admit i was planning to use this reel on my smith AMJEX, but it never happened....
Cheers, Marc.