We fished a few days over the new moon out of Mango Bay on the Coral Coast, great holiday, lots of Fiji bitter plus loads of fish including plenty of GT ranging from 10-30kg.
Have to say that as a budget GT popping trip my expectations were far exceeded. Fiji is a fishy place, a quick afternoon bottom bash session to catch dinner after a days popping showed us the amazing scope for reefies - long nose emperor, maori wrasse, various cod and one weird looking deep sea trevally of some sort.
The afternoon we arrived on the coast was calm and muggy, that days charter had just returned with a 45kg yellowfin and a few bull mahi. Fresh pan fried mahi for dinner and we were delighted to hear that the weather prediction for the next three days was favourable.
First afternoon we couldn't resist a quick warm up session on the local reef in front of the resort. Daz nabbed a spanish mackerel and had another bigger model launch itself completely out of the water with a seafrog in its toothy mouth only to spit it out. Quiet on the GT front. One big swipe at a popper but no connection.
The next day we left early and headed wide to an island. Stunning place. Once we reached the far side we would drift down and cast poppers into the back of fringing reef and breaking waves. No signs of any humans out here which is incredibly refreshing. Straight away we were into fish with 4 or 5 frisky little 10-15kg GT responding to poppers.
We then went out to a new spot, a bombie with deep water beside a breaking circular reef. First drop Daz gets completely stitched up and reefed by something unstoppable. Next drop he was on again landing a very nice 1st ever dogtooth. I got my first ever doggie as well - small models but highly satisfying. Dan also got into the action landing one as well and then getting completely dusted by another.
My arms were destroyed by a first solid day jigging and popping and I needed an emergency arm massage by an old wise mamma from the neighbouring village. A winter in Melbourne working on a computer each day is no way to approach a GT fishing holiday. Lesson learnt. The massage served me well tho and it was awesome to visit some locals and be so looked after.
Day two we returned to the bomby with the plan to pull a big dog off it. Dan got smashed first. drop. He was up front in the bow and it was hilarious to see him make his way under a heavy screaming drag to the more stable rear platform to tackle the fish. At the same time Johnny our skipper was slowly motoring us backwards away from the wall of reef. The swell had picked and choppy conditions saw us taking on water as we motored backwards resulting in floating suncream tubes and water bottles and our deckie Mickey starting to bail water out. It all added to the mayhem with Dan getting completely torched by a large dogtooth.
A few more drops and Daz was into another decent doggie. His hooker jig seemed to work with any action and the fish crashed it as he was simply reeling in through the top 1/3 of the water column. This doggie was pretty done in by the time it came to the surface and was doomed to become dogtooth curry.
I landed a silver jaw jobfish which the Fijian's call Pukka Pukka.
We headed back to the island for some popping and it seemed a little quiet. The tide was slack so we trolled and nabbed a few yellowfin and skipjack. Some more popping inside a lagoon on the other side of the island. Looked like an amazing spot but very quiet with one cranky red bass taken and one tiny 10kg GT which got airborne in its attempt to eat a full-scale kong.
Our last day fishing we wanted some more GT. Out at the island and we didn't wait long before we were all into fish. They were a touch bigger and after a few drifts we all landed 15-20kg fish. Dan threw out a dark coloured baby runboh with accounted for a solid GT around 25-30 mark. I then watched a spectacular strike, a huge silver body slamming the popper horizontally. The fish was parallel to the boat and its whole body was visible. It was flanked by two other solid fish sitting on each of its shoulders. The fish peeled line and was way out over a shallow reef by the time it turned and I got some line back. It decided to wake up when it was near the boat resulting in some mayhem as it took off again dragging me from one side of the boat to the other. I was secured in the thought that a large Fijian was standing by to grab hold of me...
I was very happy and relieved to after see colour and get it onboard for a quick photo.
The rest of our stay was all about beer, Fijian deep tissue massages, drinking fresh coconuts and volleyball. We were well looked after with a few bonus trips out in the zodiac to cast and troll for mackerel.
Gear used was:
Rods: Carpenter CV-RF40, Carpenter WV, Smith Tokara, RippleFisher 78PF.
Reels: Stella FA's 10 and 20's
Lures: Carpenter Seafrog, Fisherman crazy swimmer, Baby Runbohs, Heru Cuberas and the Heru Ulua. Craftbait stickballs and one unfortunate Hammerhead Shakure which got completely inhaled by a hungry GT and bitten off.
We mostly caught fish on poppers but stickbaitss worked well during quiet times. Smaller dark coloured poppers seemed the go over there with Daz's darkblue 135gm seafrog killing it on numerous 10-25kg fish and a dark purple 110grm fisherman crazy swimmer being the pick for me accounting for 4 fish. We fished 4 full days and got fish everyday which really made for an enjoyable visit.
Cheers
Ewan.
