We arrived early in the morning to drop Sami, Igor and Raymond off at the airport and to pick up Mogi-san, Murata-san, Yoshimoto-san and Nishigaki-san. It was a case of the East meets the West in the Middle East! We took a few pictures talked about the fishing the previous week and the possibilities for the coming week, so really great fun!! It has been a great privilege for us to have two of my most respected popping and jigging fisherman in Dubai and Oman.
We dropped Mogi-san and team off at their hotel to have a shower and a short sleep before meeting up at the Ocean Active Shop. I showed the guys around and talked a few tactics for the coming week and then headed to do a bit of sight seeing around Dubai. It was great to do the sights, as you tend to forget that there are some very cool places in Dubai!
Early the following morning Capt Kegan and myself picked up Mogi-san and the team from the hotel and headed for Southern Oman. The drive is long but it is always a great time to relax and enjoy the wide open spaces, camels and long straight roads! We stopped about every 2 hours for petrol and a break! Finally as the sun started going down we come over the top of the plateau into Shuwayamiah. It is always an awesome sight to see the blue calm sea after so many hours in the car!! You could feel the excitement in the car jump to full speed!
We arrived at the lodge and we were greeted by the great Arabic Hospitality from Ashraf and the team!! We all had some Arabic coffee, dates and nuts, which after a long trip is simply awesome! We got the guys settled into their rooms. The guys started setting up all their gear and were ready in no time! We had an awesome dinner of slow roasted goat in banana leaves and camel curry, very very tasty!!
Early the next morning we were up and loaded the boat in the small marina and headed out for the islands. It is such a pleasure with the new boat crusing 30 knots in luxury! We arrived at the first spot and the guys let rip with a shoal of Gamma Stickbaits, a very impressive sight! Yoshimoto-san and Murata-san were straight into a double on big fish one being 50kg+. After an epic fight two very nice fish were landed and photos taken! An excellent start to the trip! Then we had another double with Mogi-san and Yoshimoto-san, great to see Mogi-san in action. We landed another two fish and released smaller fish. Then Nishgaki-san landed a very nice GT! So first morning everyone had a good GT!
We moved to the next spot and again we got into some good fish, Nishigaki-san hooked a bus, and we managed to pull the fish off the rocks and he fought the fish with every once of power! Amazing fight and fish. We got the fish to the boat and landed a 50kg+ GT. We got a few pictures and released the fish. On checking the lure and hooks we found that he had opened a 7/0 GT Recorder!!
We tried a few more places and had some good fish come up but did not manage to land them! Really great fishing and it was awesome to watch the Japanese Technique in action. We learnt a lot from the guys and watching them work the Gammas was fantastic! We headed back to base after a good first day and everyone very happy with some good stories of the ones that we caught and the ones that got away!
The following morning we headed out after the amberjack we had found the week before to do a bit of jigging. We worked the area for a while but the fish had moved so we did a bit more exploring and found them again and all hell broke loose! We were having single, double, triple and quadruple hook ups. Very exciting stuff! I was getting tired from landing and releasing all the fish!! We hooked two big fish that gave Murata-san and Nishigaki-san really tough fights putting all the equipment and fisherman to the test, but the guys did an amazing job and landed 2 x 40kg+ AJs. We got a few pictures and released them for another day! We ended up loosing count of the number of AJs landed but it was a good few fish!
The rest of the week we continued to fish for both GTs, AJs and a heap of smaller fish like blacktip trevally, yellowdot trevally, emperor, snapper etc. The weather picked up with a NE wind blowing that made the fishing a bit tough but we still managed good fish and had a load of fun and many laughs. We had a couple of very big GTs come up on the lures and they were unstoppable.
We also had a visit to Hallaniyat Islands were we have been setting up a new lodge on the Island which will be ready in December, so from December most of our GT and AJ trips will be based from the islands cutting out the long run every morning and afternoon. We will also be able to target YFT and Marlin from the new lodge as the run from the mainland to get to the YFT and Marlin grounds is to far. So hopefully a few on stickbaits! This will also free up the lodge in Shuwayamiah for inshore and shore based trips. So all very exciting. The fishing opportunities and variety is amazing so hopefully we will be able to target a few different species from the two lodges.
The new lodge on the island is were I took my first trip to the Hallaniyat Islands about 4 years ago. We stayed in the lodge and fished the islands, it is an awesome location with the first GT spot about 1.5kms from the marina. So no more long runs and if bad weather comes we can still fish!
The trip was a great experience for all parties and we learnt a lot from Mogi-san and the team. Watching the Carpenter Rods and Stickbaits in action was something I will remember for a long time! I look forward to the next trip and hopefully a few more big fish!
Cheers,
Nick
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