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Topwater Caranx Ignobilis: Giant Trevally (GT) => Reports & Expeditions => Topic started by: Jon Li on June 15, 2009, 04:56:04 PM
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???
Went fishing yesterday for YFT , 3 of us tried lures from poppers , stickbaits , spoons , metal jigs and even tried bare trebles casting into the boiling YFTs eating small anchovies . Our lures were completely ignored by thousands if not ten of thousands of YFTs , some of them are medium sized around 30+ kg .
We were alerted by friends who fished there earlier to bring " all options " as far as lures are concerned but still zero strike let alone hook up .
Anyone have idea as one of the participants are eager to try again .
Jon .
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Hi Jon,
I know its a bit obvious, but have you tried really small metal slugs to "match the hatch". We often have to go down to tiny slugs to catch Mackerel Tuna and longtail tuna.
maybe 50mm long and 20gms
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Hi Graham ,
We tried using that , still being ignored . Lots of whalesharks around too , they are eating these small anchovies .
In the past , downsizing our lures worked and we were well prepared for that eventualities but not this time .
The commercial fishermen trolling feathers met the same fate with us , the only one that were successfull are those purse seiners !
Jon .
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:o where about were u fishing for these tuna ??
i guess times can be tough for the buggers at times!!!
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Off your normal lure, run another piece of FC shock leader to a Surf Candy or "Eye" fly imitating micro baitfish. May trigger a strike not only on the fl but may cause frenzy of the lure (Which would be more favourable!)
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As Luke said, the good 'ol Islander trick. Works well off the rocks here in different forms, but have a small fly trailing something that creates a splash and that may do the trick. Ive seen that work on all kinds of fish here.
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Jon,
Interestingly the morning previous to when we fished together, the YFT were eager to take other offerings for a short period. I had a strike on a 'Tailwalk'- Gunz stickbait and a halco metal slug. unfortunately a whale shark swallowed my gunz on a later cast and the halco slug broke off during a fight due to a wind knot.
Following this I had nothing to match the small bait and it appeared as the morning wore on the Tuna became fussy and completely focused on the 'real' bait.
The next morning as you know, though the YFT were still abundant but there was zero interest in anything apart from the real bait again regardless of the fact that we were using very small metals and landing them right on the money. ??? ???
I'd certainly like to try again.
Andy
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Guys ,
Thanks for the suggestions , everyone .
Andy , I guess must try again ! Let's wait for Ky to respond , already told him you are keen to go again .
Jon .
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A small, un-weighted imitating soft-plastic trailed off the back might work as well. Unfortunately I've not seen any sold locally.
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How did you manage to get your Gunz taken by a whale shark...cast too close to it?
Wish we had thousands of YFT around here :(
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Hi Jon... another obvious point, but what sized leader were you using?
The bigger the YFT, the better their eye-sight.
I would consider going right down to 40lb leader in cases like you described above.
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How did you manage to get your Gunz taken by a whale shark...cast too close to it?
Wish we had thousands of YFT around here :(
Andrew ,
At times we were practically " face to face " with the whale sharks ! They were so close , we could touch them with the tip of our rods .
Jon .
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Hi Jon... another obvious point, but what sized leader were you using?
The bigger the YFT, the better their eye-sight.
I would consider going right down to 40lb leader in cases like you described above.
I was using 100 lbs. mono but Andy was using , if not mistaken , 80 lbs. fluorocarbon leader . We will try the thin fluorocarbon leader the next time I encounter YFTs again , hope those YFT schools stay for a couple more weeks in the bay of Pelabuhan Ratu , south of West Java .
Jon .
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Hi Jon
Just a thought..If the tuna are that thick a obviously focussed on the bait I'm guessing you can get fairly close to them. If so try a plastic as Andy suggested, if they don't take an imitation colour try something in bubble gum pink, Don't know what it is about this colour but it works on our fish when they are fussy ;)
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Hi Chris ,
If the schools are staying in the bay , we will try catching them again this weekend , hope the baitfishes have become thin so those tunas can be enticed to strike our lures , definitely will try new technique !
Jon .
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How did you manage to get your Gunz taken by a whale shark...cast too close to it?
Wish we had thousands of YFT around here :(
The whale sharks were swimming around like giant vacuum cleaners, my guess they were working with the tuna to bring the bait to the surface. Some of them were longer than the boat which was around 30 feet. It certainly put a good bend on my Long Reef 88 ;).
Thanks for the info everyone.
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Guys ,
Went to the same place again with Andrew , Ky n Satish . We managed to catch 19 mixed bag of YFTs n Skipjack tunas up to approx. 15 kg , no change of lures and pretty much the same arsenal except with an addition of my estuary rod + Twinpower 4000HG . Everyone managed to catch some fish and we stopped fishing early due to some of the guy must return to JKT for evening appoinments .
Lots of baits , a few more whalesharks which I managed to hook one n resulting in the inevitable bust off and lots of competitors , each schools of surfacing fish must have been encircled by more than a half of a dozen boats .
What changed ? Not sure and I guess it's the mistery of the sea n fishing . Where the fish got locked jaw last week , this time they hit our lures with abandon .
Jon .
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Which lures were the winners?
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Great stuff Jon. It sounds like typical tuna fishing to me, they can be sooo fussy at times ::)
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The following photo shows the lures which the tunas were taking, far left was my best performer, second from left also took fish, mechanical pencil for scale and a much larger example of the raider-metal which Jon was using. Ky was using a small dark soft plastic about the size of my smallest metal. Light weight gear was required to cast these small lures to the surface boils which made the fishing great fun.
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Hi Jon.
Had that problem a couple fo times.
Sometimes downsizing worked and at others it did not.
Two things I found that greatly impacted the fishing was as follows.
1.Moonrise. If the time is very close( a couple of days before and after) the full moon once the moon comes up the Tuna tend to switch right off.
2.At others it has tended to be getting into what we call "the biting school".
In the same area but a couple of miles apart one school will nail most lures but the next is just a lot more difficult if not downright impossible.
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The plan is to try again early next week and that means taking a day off work , so let's see .
Jon .
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The plan is to try again early next week and that means taking a day off work , so let's see .
Jon .
Hi Jon,
Awaiting news of your catch....how big were the tuna? and have any of the fundamentals changed regarding what lures they are taking??
Tnx
Andy
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Hi Andy ,
Due to Monday , there weren't too many " competitors " and the fish in general are still of the same size but we did caught a few slightly fish than the trip we did with Ky n Satish .
A few multiple strikes and a lot more line breaks but managed to top the number to 28 fishes , a couple unstoppable due to a couple of guys were trying to be funny bringing 20 lbs. outfit , one took 45 minutes to land a 15 kg YFT n you can ask Adrianus ( the funny man ) who caused us missing precious minutes and did not succeed in finishing the task either . >:(
We use slighly bigger / heavier lures this time and the YFTs still refuse to strike surface popper , definitely bigger species are around as I had my 60 gr. Duel Aile Metal jig returned with 3 dimensional bent after a violent strike . ???
Lost a few jigs due to hooking the whale sharks , we just hold the spool and break the line when this happened , still a few of them on each boil of tunas and must be carefull not to hook them .
Jon .
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Jon - souns like you had fun. Well done any pictures coming soon?
PS: Did you get my last PM?
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Jon,
Fantastic stuff, great to see the fish still on. I may try and slip work for a day next week and have another go, I've got a few new little casting jigs to try out from smith and halco.
It's hilarious having to avoid the whale sharks with your casts.
I'd like to know what larger predators are lurking out there, no indications from teeth marks on your bent jig??
So you had no tractor inner-tube to put the 20lb crew on while you continued the chase then.. ;D ;D ;)
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Hi Andy ,
Yesterday was quite different and we did not bother to catch the smaller tunas , less whale shark activities but saw a few small school of cow YFTs which were easily spooked when approached , they were eating ballyhoos and only surface very briefly making it difficult to target .
We managed to approach these cow tunas several times but I was the only one who were able to get a solid hook up resulting in getting spooled when the tuna dove to the abyss , I was using HL TN87 mated with Stella 6000FA filled with PE4 line .
Just could not stop the tuna even though I had 7 kg initial drag set at an almost full spool , tried to stop the spool by hand but by that time the base of the spool already seen , I was left with empty spool .
In an after thought , I should have used a larger capacity reel but the choise of rod was correct , HL TN87 was able to cast the 50 gr. lure a long way to reach the wary school of cow tunas .
Need to buy more PE4 line now !
Jon .
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Jon,
That is bad luck, it must have been a real nice fish.
Seems my light tackle advice was a double edged sword, we did not see any real cows on Wednesday and after striking out personally but seeing other boats getting hits with PE3 and 40lb leaders I was thinking it might be sound.
I still have the itch, but will be tied up with work until at least Wednesday the following week so will miss wetting a line with Ky.
Here's hoping the season drags on, I did see huge amounts of bait lying in the bay so we may be lucky and I hope we can get another run together
Cheers
Andy
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Hi Andy ,
The end of the month is the earliest I can go , I am off to fish the freshwater rivers of the jungle of East Borneo starting July 18 ~ 24 but a few friends are going this week and I think Adam is trying to fish on the 25th .
No worry about the light tackle advise , next time will go better prepared !
Jon .
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Hi Andrew ,
Cut the river trip short due to rain upriver , returned to JKT n grab the tuna popping outfits n straight away we went to P.Ratu , finally we got one decent size YFT n almost got spooled again with only approx. 30m left in the spool when the leader broke , had 2 more strikes but no hook up .
Thinking of taking this Friday off from the office but this depends on the availability of the boat , I predict the big tunas are going to be still there this week but not sure for how long .
Jon . :D
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Well, that is a beauty of a fish, congratulations. Finally paydirt.
I'm hoping i can slip a day this week too, lets stay in touch.
Cheers
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Great fish Jon...bugger the office mate, go and book that boat ;)