GT virgins popping cherries with Poppin Tonga

[Josh Morrison]

Hi all,

A friend and I travelled to Tonga a few months ago for a shot at popping for GT's, we do quite a bit of topwater fishing here in NZ for kingfish with great success and were both very curious to experience how the legendary GT's fight compared to big NZ kingies.

For our trip we decided to travel to the island of Vava'u staying at Talihau Beach and fishing with Kurt Carlson who own and operates Poppin Tonga and Luckys Beach Houses.

After having our trip postponed twice due to the extreme weather they had been experiencing (quite nasty cyclones) we were absolutely over the moon with the weather forecast we had ahead of us. 5 days of fishing on glassy calm seas with the sun baking every day!.

Here is a pic of our fishing platform for the trip...Lupo which is a 5.5m Boston Whaler.



During our 5 day trip we explored several of the small islands and reef areas and threw poppers and stickbaits at everything we thought looked fishy...which of course was every place we saw.

A couple of pics of places we fished...







The first few days saw a variety of fish fall victim to various poppers and stickbaits....

small GTs...


Bluefin Trevally


Baracoutta


Emperor Sweetlips


Red Bass


Green Jobfish


Flowery Cod


We stopped very briefly for a quick jig over a bit of a reef which produced 3 different species for 3 drops of the jig then it went dead. One of the fish was a really awesome looking Black Trevally....



The GT's we were chasing proved elusive for the first few days with only small ones eating our offerings....that was until we got a few days away from the new moon and then a few bigger ones came out to play.

I caught a couple up to size M and got smoked by one size large specimen in tiger country which I couldn't stop on the very last day







My mate Steve had a very quite first few days but man did he make up for it!! landing 5 over 30kg and one measuring 1.5m and estimated at 45-50kg (pretty awesome when the current Tongan record is 43kg) We released all GT's unharmed.











All in all it was a really cool place to go as an introduction to GT fishing and would definitely go again. I would highly recommend to others to contact Kurt from Poppin Tonga if this sort of fishing is of interest to you. Kurt is a great skipper and works bloody hard to find the fish and make your stay at his place a memorable one.

GT Fishing in Vava'u, Tonga - Giant Trevally

Cheers,
Josh

[Matt Born]

Great fishing mate! looks like an awesome place!!
 
That small Black is very cool!!
 
great report - thanks for sharing!!!

[Angus Hulme]

Awesome stuff Josh. Those images are brilliant, location looks stunning, and so too the fishing, by the look of that report. Some great variety there. How did you reckon the larger GTs compared to your big NZ kingies?

Anyway, thanks for sharing

Cheers
Angus

[Vincenzo Caccico]

Congrats mate i would like one day to try there!

Vincenzo

[Nathan Cefai]

Great work Champ,that fish is Bus...
 

[Josh Morrison]

Awesome stuff Josh. Those images are brilliant, location looks stunning, and so too the fishing, by the look of that report. Some great variety there. How did you reckon the larger GTs compared to your big NZ kingies?

Anyway, thanks for sharing

Cheers
Angus

Hi Angus,

Based on my extremely little experience I have with GT fishing and seeing Steve fight them bigger models I reckon GT's possibly go harder at the start of the fight but kingies fight hard till the bitter end where as the GT's we caught gave up fairly quickly in comparison.

CHeers,
Josh

[Tony Fowler]

[Josh Morrison]

Hi Tony,

The terrain really varied a lot from shallow (under 5m) coral reef with sandy surrounding areas. Casting close to the rock faces on some of the islands was quite steep and clear areas but we didn't really get a lot of bites around those areas. The bigger fish came from areas where the coral reef dropped away to steep drop offs with deep darker water and casting near the drop offs.

We were using PE5 and PE8 Varivas GT Max SMP on Stella 10000s and 20000s and rods from Fisherman, Carpenter and Synit. Leaders were 130lb and 170lb Varivas

Cheers,
Josh

[Tony Fowler]

Thanks Josh

It sounds like a resonably forgiving place.

What synit rods did you use?
I'm looking at getting the DS150 and DS250 for east coast kings and the DS350 to replace an beaten up Nirai that i have for doggies etc.

How do the synit rods compare to carpenter or ripplefisher jig rods?

Cheers

[Josh Morrison]

PM coming soon Tony

[Celso Mendonca]

Congrats Josh,beautiful GTs.
When you fishing in Tonga?

Regards.

[Josh Morrison]

We were there in the beginning of March mate.

[John Westcott]

Awesome report! Thanks have been thinking of another Island Popping Trip you may have made up my mind!

[Ryan Theyer]

TOnga is the place to be 

[Trent]

WOW!!!!!! thanks for sharing mate