most of the 6 anglers on this trip had never fished with each other before. actually, i personally didnt see 2 of the gang till the day of departure.
luckily, the group turned out shitty enough. really, there is little fun spending 7 full days and nights with ppl who are too decent.
when we touched down in Male, relatively strong wind was felt. not a good sign
.
after a nite's rest, the safari boat set sail. the sea was rough but still tolerable in Male atoll. but after entering the channel, i was breaking cold sweat, spent the majority of the time on the sofa, and missed lunch. doubts began to surface. did i work hard, made sacrifices to come to suffer? such is the irony of life.
popping was poor. we persisted, popped in some of the most beautify and fishy terrain and only had half hearted strikes and actions from smallish GTs.
jigging was another story. the action was consistant. but most of the bigger fish managed to elude us after brief fights, either from busted leaders or dropped hooks. i lost my Skill Jig. ouch!
i was using a Calstar 7465XL (20-50lb). however, i found it quite user unfriendly. had a hard time keepin it loaded when hookup. spend most of my time desperately winding. dropped tons of fish.
on the other hand, those using dedicated jigging outfits like JiggingMaster and Smith also had their share of lost fish.
one thing i noticed was that while the bigger fish kept getting dropped off the hooks, the smaller ones were surfacing with badly torn jaws, mostly hanging on only by thin flaps of skin.
guess we had problems making the SJ41s stick on bigger fish, while they tore up the smaller fish badly.
the bad weather prevented us from fishing the more productive outer reef much. but on days when we did (on the 12 and 13th, everything cleared), the jiggin was exceptional. not that we hooked any monster. sadly, poppin sucks, outer reef or not.
just when we thought everything is going to be plain sailing, the weather turned against us. on the 2nd last day, wall after wall of storm clouds formed. the captain made a dash for the harbor. very strong wind was experienced. we started to worry about missing our flight, as there was still a channel to cross.
luckily, the captain gave the "GO" signal on the 15th morning.
frankly, we didnt hook that many fish. but we also lost count by the 2nd day.
biggest GT was 22kg, grouper 17kg, dogtooth 9kg - all by the same guy. really irritating fellow
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my "best" was a red bass and long nose emperor, both 7 kg on my PE2 jigging outfit.
the 6 of us perhaps popped about 20 plus 30 GT this time, a far cry from my 2004 trip, when 4 anglers popped 188 fish.
at Male harbor, we saw tons of GTs being downloaded. some very huge YFTs too. one look like a 200 pounder. actually, i dunno, but i weigh 180 lb and it look fatter than me.
perhaps the poor catch can be attributed to weather, perhaps to over-fishing. but i guess the catch rate can only go down, considering there are more mouth to feed on planet earth.
