Howdy guys, just got back from a great trip with my mate Tony "Chooky" Fowler to Taveuni. What a beautiful place! The weather wasn't very kind to us but we gritted our teeth and fished on through. The first morning gave us a taste of things with four GTs and a few reef ooglies to about 35lb in an hours fishing before a storm front pushed us off the water. We sat around camp for a while and then went for a jig at a pinnacle four kms off the coast. The wind made things pretty unworkable so we headed into the lee of the island to pop a few reefs in the Somosomo strait. A chunky spaniard crashed my home made stickbait and really made my day! I love spaniards
He's the one in the pic below.
Next two days were a wipe out while the boys fitted a new 225hp four stroke to the boat. No dry docking, no forklift, just half a dozen big local boys hoisting the 260kg motor down the beach and onto the transom. Amazing.
John and Roberta gave us an extra couple of days free accomodation for mucking us around so all was good. We had a lazy couple of days snorkelling over magnificent coral reefs and generally kicking back. Was pretty tough.
The next day we popped our butts off from dawn to dusk for a total of 0 GTs but a heap of red bass, barracuda, blue fin trevally and assorted reef fish kept us interested. We had a few follows but it seemed the cooler water temps after the low pressure system had shut down the GTs. Also at the start of the trip the guys said that about the only thing that affects the GT fishing around there seemed to be undersea earthquakes - and guess what we had that day
Next day was blowing pretty hard again so we had a bit of a pop for no result and then trolled up a couple of spaniards etc before pulling the pin early.
We had a heap of fun the next day chasing schools of yellowfin around chucking stickbaits at them. A couple of hook ups but they didn't hold. We caught a couple trolling lazer pros that gave us a good battle. At one stage the boat was absolutely surrounded by feeding yellowfin from 30-50kgs with a whale shark right at the transom checking us out. Man what a sight! The skipper was yelling at me to "cast cast" but i was happy just looking and locking it into the memory banks. A special moment.
Our last day looked pretty gloomy as we busted into a teep chop with some black clouds ahead but huey gave us a break and it cleared to not a bad day. Tony got a nice GT about 30lb, we had a few big strikes and things looked promising. Then the motor died. There was about a six foot swell pounding on the reef and the wind was quickly pushing us that way. Not good! We were 25 miles from home, the nearest little island was about one mile away over a deep blue ocean trench that I wasn't looking forward to swimming across covered in coral cuts. There was a mad scramble by the skipper to get the motor going, the decky Bubba was doing what he could with the anchor out the bow in the deep water and the first wave of a set was marching in on us. Again, not good. The reef edge was just behind us, the wave picked us up and somehow broke about level with the transom without sucking us back onto the reef. The next wave in the set was just as big and we were not going to be so lucky with this one. The lip of the wave started to feather, the motor finally kicked over and the skipper gunned us through the wave as it broke and out into the deep stuff. Change the undies and back to casting.
We got a lot of nudges from big GTs that day but they just weren't playing the game. Again a heap of other species kept our rods bent so we had some fun. Near the end of the day we were at a corner of reef that just seemed to scream doggies so I asked if we could stop for a jig. A heap of current was pushing in against the corner of a near vertical reef wall that rose up out of hundreds of metres of depth. The sounder showed some good fish down there of some description.
Down went my jig. A fish grabbed it and shot upwards, then dropped it without hooking up. Some big tooth holes in the jig had us smiling. Next drop a solid fish crunched the jig about half way up and put up a good fight. My first ever doggy came spiralling into view out of the depths. He was around 20kgs. I was a very happy boy, my dream fish finally
Tony was busily jigging away and had an assortment of reef ooglies and those black trevally things to his credit as i dropped my nagamasa down again. Jig, jig, jig, CRUNCH!!! A brick wall stop, some big head shakes as the obviously much bigger doggy figured out something was wrong and then the stella's drag started screaming! He went straight down at a great rate under about 11kgs of drag. The smith amj rod was pretty well red lining at that drag so I kept it low and just hung on for the ride. Luckily he stopped and I managed to win back some line before he dove again. Three times that happened until the hard work began of working him up from the deep. I wasn't counting my chickens until he was in the boat though. After a heap of sweat (and encouragement from Bubba in the form of grabbing my asse) it was with a heap of hootin' and a hollerin' that the skipper and bubba strained to haul the big doggy over the gunwhale. Very happy once again!
Tony was all pumped up to catch one after all that - and I was phycically wrecked - so it was all his from there. Big Johnny put us back over the mark and Tony dropped down his bling. He jigged furiously and stopped for a blow half way up, his rod tip went twitch twitch, Tony took a turn on the reel and struck hard. The nirai buckled over instantly and line started pouring from the reel. That fish just rocketted straight down and all we could do was stand there and watch his spool empty. He jammed his hand on the spool as best you could but that fish just wasn't stopping. It emptied his expedition of 400+ yards of 80lb tuffline in what seemed like ten seconds flat! Tony was a shaking mess for a while after that. Was very entertaining
We were a bit unlucky to cop those conditions but we fish on hard and were rewarded for our efforts. The skipper John and decky Bubba were a laugh a minute and did all that they could to put us onto fish in the trying conditions and that's all you can ask I reckon.
We'll be back. Check out the 'Makaira by the sea" website if you're keen to go and feel welcome to contact me with any questions.
The gear we used: Tony popped with a dogfight mounted to a tokara spooled with 120 varivas smp with 100 lb twisties to a 200lb bite section. He jigged with an expedition mounted to a nirai spooled with 80lb tuffline.
I popped with a dogfight mounted to a carpenter TBL (the heaviest one) spooled with 100lb tuffline to 100lb twisties nail knotted to a 250lb single bite piece. I jigged with a stella 20000 mounted to a smith amj (the heaviest one) spooled with varivas PE6 which I think is 78lb. I used a 200lb ygk leader albrighted to the varivas and the doggies took a smith nagamasa 280 gram jig in the silver colour. I used two assists which were owner premade jobs that came with solid ring attached and heat shrink over the cord. There was no wear to the assist cords but the jig itself had chunks taken out of it!
Hooroo, Steve.
