This adventure was a long time in the planning and boy was it worth it!
After the superb trip I had with No Boundaries Oman in March 2013, my great mates from the Ebbtide Adventures crew in Melbourne were very keen to try the same in 2014. After many months of planning, anticipation and endless tackle chat
, the party that set off to fish from March 23rd to 29th 2014 was:
John Cahill and Andrew Smith - the driving forces behind Ebbtide Adventures and The Lure Locker
Toby McClure - bream nut who had got the taste for the heavy stuff in Bali last year
Stephen Callus -well known to many members of this forum and a veteran of several GT trips
Jason Jefferies - all round sports fishing fanatic with lots of experience with billfish, tuna, kings and of course GTs.
And, me.
The first thing I must say is a huge thank you to each of those five guys for making this such a memorable trip both for the fishing and, very importantly, at a social level. The fish were unreal and the company every bit as good.
One of the many double hook ups - Stephen and Mark tight in this pictureThe GT fishing was absolutely EPIC with 26 boated for the trip and many more lost or missed. Four out of the six member crew caught their PB GTs - all of those fish 50 kg+ (mostly weighed on board).
With a PhD fisheries research student amongst the crew, I should also mention that a satellite tag was deployed on one of the fish and I can't wait to see the survivability data in 30 day's time. I am sure more will be posted about that later.
It was very much a popper bite. I caught two smaller GTs on a floating BCS Custom Baits Wave Walker 170 and John had one large fish on a sinking Temple Reef Lambo. Otherwise, every GT boated was on a popper - especially successful chuggers were Adhek Big Buffalo (2 truly massive fish), the big Hitter Kimitsu, Heru Cubera and Craftbait GT3.
Toby's magnificently marked brute With so many extremely brutish large GTs hitting our lures, it is hardly surprising that there is as tale of hook carnage to report. No treble was immune no matter how big, and even a Shout Kudako 9/0 single was severely straightened! The fish that did that was incredibly brutal and completely destroyed the popper also.
Hook carnageOn the lighter tackle, it was not quite as extraordinary as last March but world record class queenfish could be caught almost at will and provided excellent value on the PE3 set ups. Everyone also enjoyed the bream and spangled emperor action and a bull mahimahi caught by Jason was a very good catch.
Steve with one of dozens of massive queenfish caughtThe weather for this trip was a bit mixed with big seas and 20-30 knot winds on some days, and relative calmness on others.
A small number of pictures follow. There are many 100s of pictures to sort through and an extraordinary amount of video footage as well. I hope that other members of the team will add to my small selection below.
Finally, a huge debt of thanks goes to Ed Nicholas the whole No Boundaries crew. Thank you so much guys for your unsurpassed levels of professionalism, hospitality and good humour.
Some of the Massive GTs:Couple of the smaller GTs:Some of the lighter tackle fish, all on top water lures:Fantastic Shot - Toby tight on a Queenie, Mark still waitingA bit of lump in the sea