Richard one of our good clients and friend has been fishing the Musandam for the last few days and managed to catch his first GT followed by another 5 GTs which was awesome after a few trips with bad weather and no fish.
Wim from ART Marine and myself joined Richard yesterday for a day trip up to the Musandam. The weather has been a bit up and down with a strong south easter blowing which is about the only wind that we don't want as it causes us a few problems!
We had a great evening with one of Anuras chicken curries and a few splashes of happiness at GT House. We prepared all of the equipment and got a good nights sleep. We woke up still dark and Richard cooked an awesome breakfast which lifted the spirits and excitement and we headed up into the Musandam.
The weather was perfect with glassy seas much to our relief! We headed for the first spot and the water was green but we threw a few light poppers and stickbaits with nothing much around. Capt Kegan was helping Richard get set up on the jigging rig and on Richards very first drop ever the rod bent over double and the game was on. After much laughing and comments been thrown around a bus queenfish came to the surface! not bad for the first drop ever on jig! A few pictures and the fish was released. After a few more casts we headed to the top of the Musandam.
On the first drift Richard was on fire andgot hit and smoked on his light gear. Second drift Richard was in the hot seat again and hooked another decent GT on light gear and after a good fight landed a nice GT, we took a few pictures and released. Another couple of drifts and Wim hooked up on his first GT and had a great fight and his new rig. He landed the fish to much excitement and got a few pictures and released.
While we were lining up for another drift we noticed birds diving and went to investigate, we found a huge shoal of enormous longtail tuna (northern bluefin). We see them often but only usually have a couple of casts at them before they disappear. This shoal stayed up for a long time but did not want to take any lures. I finally managed to get two huge strikes on my 30lbs light spinning rig with a needlenose plug! I hit the fish a couple times but the hooks pulled, I think the rod did not have enough backbone to set the hook in a 40kg longtail!
After this the place came alive with baitfish and tuna, they were rolling all over the surface eating tiny baitfish, as much as we tried we could not get another strike, very stressful to see so many big fish that are World Record class and not be able to hook them up. The fish ranged from about 30kg-60kg. After a while Hassan our Omani captain arrived on his local fishing boat with his cousin and started fishing with handlines! The competition was on! After a while we noticed Hassan following something and we went to investigaite and to our amazement Hassan was fighting a bus tuna on 80lbs handline!! After about half an hour Hassan brought a donkey of a longtail to the boat! The fish must have been around the 40kg mark. They gaffed the tuna as this is a highly prized catch and would bring in good money for his family! So old school handline and USD1 lure kick all of the fancy Stella, Orions, Bomber, Smith etc ass! Quite a humbling experience especially when Richard asked if we had any of the local Omani USD1 lures!! But it was an experience watching Hassan in action catching such an amazing fish on handline!
We tried for tuna for a while longer and I managed to hook up a sailfish on the light gear but again luck was not with me and the fish came off. We moved back to try for some GTs with the current pushing nicely and on the first drift I hooked up a nice fish which ran straight into the rocks and reefed me!!! Aftet that there was quite a few quite laughs around the boat followed by a few louder ones!! Just shows anyone can get their pipes cleaned by a GT no matter what level of experience! So far I was having a shocker of a day, a bit rusty after to much office work!!
We tried a few more places and I finally managed to pick up my game after not having much luck in the morning and landed 3 GTs, 2 on popper and one on jig. I was using the Race Point 200 with a Stella 18000 with 100lbs Tufline braid. Amazing outfit and I had one fish hooked in the side in big current. I had the fish under the boat and I put on as much pressure as I could and the rod handled like a dream! Really excited to get the rod stuck in to the Southern Oman GTs this weekend.
We will be leaving tomorrow for Southern Oman to start our season down there. there is still a bit of weather from the monsoon but hopefully we will be able to get out to the islands and get a few good fish. We have a few new plans and ideas for this seasons trips to offer a bit more diversity down there so will hopefully keep you updated as we go.
Cheers,
Nick
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