After the last few trips we have been seeing a lot of sailies in the Musandam, we finally decided to give the GTs a early season rest and target the sailies. It has been quite a while since we targeted the sailies when we used to get them off Dubai when they used to be here in good numbers, so we had to dust off the lures and rods and also make a few sneaky purchases from the shop (I think the Ocean Active team is our own best customers in the shop!!)
We rigged up some Mould Craft lures to be able to bait them up with Ballyhoo. We found some very fresh horse ballyhoo in Dibba and the gameplan was ready for the following day. We sat around the bar and had a few long discussions on tactics, along with an awesome roast on the braai! With everything set we went to bed.
The next morning we were on the water early and heading for our chosen spot. It has been a long time since we trolled at any length so it took some time to get all the lures out and in position. Obviously we had a couple of small stickbaits rigged up to bait and switch if the opportunity arouse!
After a few minutes of watching the lures a sickle showed up in the spread hitting the lures and the game was on. We hit the fish a few times but unfortunately we did not hook up. We had a few more fish come up and finally we managed to set the hook and had an excellent display with the fish striping off hundreds of meters of line in no time! We got the fish to the boat and got a few good pictures and released.
We trolled for a few more hours raising more sailfies but did not manage to hook up on anymore fish. I had come up with a plan to use Decoy jigging hooks with the lures as they had a very wide gap in the hook but I think this was a bit of a mistake as we should rather have used a long shank hook or circle hooks. But with the new boat coming for trolling and light tackle it was a good and fun start.
We also couldn't resist a bit of light tackle fishing for some small GTs and sherri. Caught a few smaller GTs, Organe Spot Trevally and Sherri on plastics and needle noses to finish off a fantastic day!
Cheers,
Nick
