Bali fishing

[Andrew Hood]

Gday all. My name is Andrew Hood, new to the forum. I'm from south east south Australia and enjoy all sorts of fishing especially Southern Bluefin Fishing. Have mainly trolled for tuna but have started to throw poppers at some with a bit of success. The Bluefin have moved on now so will have to wait until next year to try some of the techniques on here. Love the reports on poppers and GT's. I'm taking the family to Bali next August/September and was trying to find a charter to have a boys day while there. Any info would be great.

Regards Hoody

[Ben Furness]

These guys are not a site sponsor so please remove it if I am breaking any rules but call the guys in the link below.

http://www.xplore-charters.com/

Their Tiger CAT is a fantastic boat to pop from with up to 4 people max, easier with 3 or 2. The service is excellent, cheap and the fishing is good. Not the best GT destination by any means but you will catch some nice fish and have a lot of fun doing it.

If you do the overnigh three day trip request for the guys to book you a room at Yuli's Homestay in Lombok, awesome spot and her omelette's and banana pancakes are the best I have ever tasted!

They have top quality gear you can use if you don't want to bring your own, just let them know when you book.

[Andrew Hood]

Cheers for the reply. I'll look into it. Only three of us blokes going so could be a ripper trip. As long we land a few fish we'll be happy

[Ben Furness]

They also run a larger boat out as far as Komodo and Alor if you are interested, I think you can charter it for up to 12 days in a row, probably more if you are willing to do the village runs to stock up the boat? You can either fly across and meet them over there or you can cruise in the boat and fish the coast lines of Lombok and Nusa Tenggara and along the way. Plenty of big fish would be swimming along those coastlines!

[Marko Pekic]

is it common to catch fish in bali or is it a luck of the draw type trip?

[Dan Konig]

I think you are pretty likely to get something, whether it is something good is another question.

Last trip I only got one GT, but also an amber, some barracuda etc.

By no means a successful trip, but gives you something to do when you need a break from the beach bars :-)

[Allan Chan Hian Lian]

I would give it a miss, had a 2 days trip earlier this year & got only 2 takes with no hook up in thousand of casts between us. Heard same stories all over again.

[Ben Furness]

I was there in march and got about 15 GT over 3 days, we missed another 10 or so. Also got bass and barracuda as well.

[Mark Harris]

Andrew, if you are coming up to Bali anyway and want a day's popping, then do it.  Few folks understand just how many 30 kg plus (and plenty 40-50) GTs are caught in Bali and Lombok waters. It can be really hard work and the sites are not ones which produce boat-loads of fish. But the quality is there.

The only issue is the time of year. August-September is not great.  Leave it as late into September as you can.

The key Lombok sites are reachable on a long day trip from Bali and give you a better chance of catching GTs. On the other hand, the main Bali site has produced bigger GTs, if less of them.