Day 4
By now we had settled into our new camp home and had caught some good fish so anything extra was a bonus. I was really enjoying that this was not on an exploratory trip but a holiday and we took things a bit easier and enjoyed ourselves and the company of the group and guys helping us. We woke up after a somewhat disturbed night with massive ghost crabs trying to break into our tent, but they did succeed with Luke and Barrys tent and the guys got woken up in the middle of the night with a crab crawling over them!! Can imagine quite a fright and hell of a funny story!!
We enjoyed our morning coffee as the sun was coming up over the horizon followed by a quick swim in the sea to wake us up and then it was back on the boats heading out for the GT area. We had found that most of the GT bite was in the afternoon when the current was pushing hardest, so the plan was only to fish a few drifts for the GTs and then head out to do a bit of jigging and try find some deep water beasts.
Packing the boats in the morning in the small shorebreak always causes a bit of fun!
Heading out
We arrived at the same time at the GT area and before we could even get our rods out Luke was into the first GT. This was going to be named Luke Day! He started off early on fire and ended it like a raging fire!! Luke made short work of the first GT as it was a small fish as a loosener for the morning. After a couple of pics the fish was released. I had a big fish come up and look at the lure but not commit. We moved inshore to some ship wrecks to try a new area with lots of baitfish and looked really great but did not find any GTs but Barry and Luke found a nice shallow area with structure and current and managed to catch some nice Bluefin! Awesome to add to the species list! With the current dying off totally we headed out for the deeper water.
Luke with a loosener in the morning!
Barry with a nice bluefin on a FCL
Luke asking the bluefin where his grandparents are???
Now jigging 350gr jigs after throwing poppers and stickbaits for 4 days is something that hurts a bit! But after a few moans and groans we got into the jigging. We moved around the place testing depths with our lines and had a couple of hits and then I had a massive hit that cut through double 700lbs Kevlar cord! After a few more drifts we moved back towards our camp to an area where there are troughs and peaks. Quite amazing you will be fishing in 60m of water and drifting towards the shore about 1km away and then on your next drop you cannot hit the bottom or it will be 200m deep. With proper equipment I think you would find some big monsters!
Barry and Luke found a nice ledge which the captain with no electronics put them right on the top! On the first drop Barry had a big hit and was into a good fish, after a great fight Barry brought a nice AJ to the surface, very happy with the fish after fishing for them in Fujiarah for practice for the last few months!!
Barry with his AJ
We did one last drift in front of the camp and Sami had a good hit and landed his biggest jobfish of the trip. He was fast becoming the Jobfish King! By mid morning all the current had died down and the fishing was slow so we decided to head back to camp and enjoy a long swim, lunch and afternoon swim to get ready for the afternoon session!
Sami bending on the OBX500
Bus Jobie
The afternoon session would be one of our best session of the trip. We got onto the GT spot and the current was ripping and there were standing waves as the current was running one direction and the wind blowing in the opposite direction. I took a look at this and initially thought the current was to strong and from passed experience that the GTs would hang off the side of a really strong current but I was very wrong and as we arrived again Lucky Luke let rip with a cast and was straight into a fish. For most of the afternoon evertime we looked over Luke was into another fish! I really thought he was becoming a commercial GT fisherman with the number of fish he was hooking!! It was great to watch and a few of the fish the guys pulled the fish out far into open water and the battles took a very long time and we later came to find out that 2 of these beasts were hooked badly with back hook in the mouth and front hook in the side, really great fishing to be able to get these big fish to the boat in this current!! Great fishing!
Heading out of the bay for the afternoon session
Luke ended up with 5 GT for the afternoon session with several other fish raised plus one in the morning for a total of 6 for the day which in Socotra is no easy feat! Luke was using a Gamma 160 Blue, and FCL Labo 81 EXT which made it even more impressive as it is a PE8 rod!
Luke bending after pulling the fish out into calmer water
Luke bending and getting some help to stay in the boat!
One of the many!
Bus GT!!
Black mamma! Hard to pull this fish sideways in a strong current! Great skills!
And Luke continued to put fish late into the evening.......
On our boat Sami also found a bit of a winning streak and hooked into several fish landing 4 big fish and using a few new techniques to land the fish to try and get leverage. We also had a double hook up and got both fish to the boat. Sami hooked into a monster that we could not stop, even with the RP300, 130lbs Power Pro hollow and Stella 18k the fish almost stripped off half the spool in no time and pulled the line into the spool. I felt the spool afterwards along with the drag and it was rock hard not sure how it even got the line to cut into the spool! Some fish are just not supposed to be stopped and give us fuel for telling some good stories f the one that got away! But Sami got his revenge and caught several great fish on a range of lures from the Siren to Craft baits.
Sami and myself bending on a double
Sami fighting on the RP300, max pressure!
Big fat mamma!
Another great fish
Sami putting all his effort in!
Awesome fish on Samis favourite Siren, fusilier colour!
With low gunnels Sami found a new way to put max pressure and get the fish out of the current, Sami always pushing the boundries!
Old bucket mouth! Caught on a Craft Bait Black GT3
I managed to sneak in the back door and hooked and landed three good fish and my first decent fish on the Siren Bad Mon. Sami and I have hooked so many big GTs on the Siren Bad Mon but always managed to loose the fish for some reason so was great for both of us to hook and land big fish!
Bending on the WV80XH
Another nice black GT caught on a Hammerhead G Cup
Awesome strong rod gave me a good work out!
Great GT and the second decent fish of the day on Sirens
Finally the sun strated to dip behind the mountains and it was an end to a great day cruising back with sore muscles and a lot of big fish landed in tough conditions, we had finally worked out Socotra properly and ended the day with 12 GTs which with the small boats and strong currents I thought was a great achievement that we all enjoyed and made our trip a success and all of the planning and stressing worth it and we still had 2 days to go!
Sunset on the beach with the rods stacked in the rod rack ready for action!
The last 2 days to follow!
