Spooked fish?

[Jay Burgess]

I noticed when we were GT fishing on the weekend that after a couple of hookups it was no point flogging the same bit of water because subsequent strikes were pretty rare. Is this normal for GT's?

Quite often moving to another spot when it went quiet resulted in hookups instantly. I also noticed that if there was no strikes or hookups on the first half-dozen casts it was worth moving also.

[Brandon Khoo]

Jay, that is very common.
After a few hookups, it is common for the fish to get a bit spooked. If you give it a break for about half hour, you'll find that the fish will have recovered and be on the bite again i if they are still there

[Luke Wyrsta]

I would call GT hunting a very active form of fishing in terms of searching and working fish. If you have a spot you want to work, start 100m or so upwind or with the wave direction to work the spot, then once you've gone passed it and covered some ground, then maybe drive around and start again if the structure/current looks promising. Otherwise, just keep trucking on. Put your motor "just" in gear to get an idea of the pace to fish spots (someone at the helm all the time if you can) - that's all that is required. No hits or follows, keep moving on. If its just a small fish, keep going - the bigger fish will make there prescene known when they want to so theres no point pounding the one area for more than a couple of minutes or half a dozen casts as Brandon mentioned.

[Stephen Polzin]

I fish bait schools, and generally only get one fish off a school and move on.  I've experienced a few double hookups though, so if you're out with another fisher, try to both cast at the same time to a new spot.  Can trigger some frantic activity.  Also, if you get a hookup keep watching the water as the fish nears the boat.  Quite often the fish will have a follower that wants to eat what your fish has got.  A couple of trips back I had a second fish follow my fish right to the side of the boat and my mate simply slapped a popper in front of it with no more than 1 metre of line out.  When they're hot they're hot! 

[Jay Burgess]

Cheers guys thanks for the replies, good to know that it's all normal and I was doing the right things to locate fish 

[Tri Vi Ton]

ever tried downsizing?

when it comes to gt popping im a noob, and i dont consider myself a monster chaser... but im pretty well versed in many other facets of sport fishing.

i noticed on a trip to the barrier reef recently that the first casts were indeed explosive... landed 1 lost 1... but the bait remained spooked so we persisted.

i persisted with 135mm popper whereas my brother and sister found casting smaller poppers more to their liking.... i got no more strikes, brother and sister had strikes, but never as explosive... by the end of the day a total of 5 hookups on the smaller profiles.

not conclusive but food for thought

[Travis Heaps]

After typing my response I realised this was a pretty old thread!  Will still post though as the info was relevant and a bit different to previous posts (I thought it was an odd question coming from you Jay!! )

Once you find your spot cast for a few minutes - if nothing then move on.  If you hook-up then all well and good, we generally move on after that - occasionally we'll go and have another cast but it just about never gets a fish.  If you have a few consecutive strikes on a popper and then nothing try switching to a stickbait, if this doesn't convince them then move on.

The best fish of our last trip was caught at a spot we had fished at least 3 times in the previous 2 hours or so.  We'd go try some different points on the island, maybe chase some tuna till our patience ran out and then start the process again.  It must have given the fish time to "forget" so to speak - either that or new fish moved into the area. 

[Jay Burgess]

After typing my response I realised this was a pretty old thread!  Will still post though as the info was relevant and a bit different to previous posts (I thought it was an odd question coming from you Jay!! )

hehe yeah old thread  was quite a bit less experienced back then