Voh, New Caledonia GT Popping

[Luke Wyrsta]

Fred Mignard sent me these photos of a recent half day popping session he had at Voh, New Caledonia.

I am sure Fred will add some more details when he has time.

Thanks for the report Fred.

[Fred Mignard]

Hi luke,

thank you for helping me with the picts.
We were at Voh, a 3 hours drive from Noumea, in the north, last saturday.
We were there to fish with christian Hervouet, a charter operator, and his son, a novice popping angler.
departure time, 6.30 am for the reef, where Christian wanted to bring us to a special place.
Due to the low tide, we caught there nothing but it looked promising.
but on the way back, along the reef, with the rising tide, it was better.
Christian started with a narrow barred mackerel of 30 kg, following by his son, with the biggest GT, est at 50 kg. The amazing thing was that we find school of GT of 6 to 10 fish. We saw very big ones but "only" hooked the smaller.
We stopped fishing by 2.00 pm with a total of 10 GT, 1 mackerel and few other fish.
We loosed a lot, broken line, pull hooks.
I even hooked fish, pulled the hooks, hooked another while retreiving the lure, pulled the hooks,
hooked another to loosed it instantly, let sit the lure and have 2 strike for nothing. All that before seeing that my GT recorder were straight.
That' it

[Luke Wyrsta]

That's a shame about the straightened GT recorder - do you have a picture?

Voh was the location of your last 50kg GT - it will be yours next time Fred!

Cheers,
Luke

[Luke Wyrsta]

GT Popping Frustration!

[Cam Foley]

Love the photo of the two lads hooked up awesome stuff.

[SHizz]

woah nice Gs but man that is a huge mack!

[Peter Lowe]

Now that's what I am talking about - Absolutley awsome - Great  stuff and sooooooooo well done.....

Thanks for sharing, I am pumped after seeing that - Happy days

[jerry dollar]

i'm new to the forum and curious. why does everone seem to fish with spinning tackle and no one uses conventional gear? i have done some long range fishing out of San Diego, California for giant yellowfin, wahoo and occasional blue marlin and if you used spinning tackle, even for 50-125 lb school tuna, the deck crew gets upset. for sure you can put a lot more drag pressure on a fish with good  conventional reel and braided line than you can with a spinning reel. once you get used to casting these outfits, distance is not a problem(if you check the stats for the world casting championships you find that the winners are guys using conventional reels). just curious     jerry

[Luke Wyrsta]

i'm new to the forum and curious. why does everone seem to fish with spinning tackle and no one uses conventional gear? i have done some long range fishing out of San Diego, California for giant yellowfin, wahoo and occasional blue marlin and if you used spinning tackle, even for 50-125 lb school tuna, the deck crew gets upset. for sure you can put a lot more drag pressure on a fish with good  conventional reel and braided line than you can with a spinning reel. once you get used to casting these outfits, distance is not a problem(if you check the stats for the world casting championships you find that the winners are guys using conventional reels). just curious     jerry

Hi Jerry,

Using a spinning reel/threadline is pretty much the unwritten law when it comes to this kind of fishing.
These reels used are purpose built for this use - ideal for GSP/PE lines.

There is no room to waste time worrying about laying the line or dealing with birdnests. You need to be able to quickly and smoothly cast 120g+ of weight a long distance - something which isn't the easiest or quickest thing to do with an overhead (people who love overheads may disagree, but you need to try this style of fishing - it is usually the person who can cast the furthest, quickest and most often that really wins). Btw, are overhead tournament casters using PE8+ lines - i wouldn't think so.

Drag settings are also changed regularly during the fight - if you are using a pre-set lever drag or star drag overhead, again, too much to worry about when you have a rampaging GT, locked-up, with a boat reversing, close to a pounding reef edge! Threadlines make drag modification very easy - and i would disagree with you there Jerry, there are members here that often use drag settings that would compare to fishing stand-up 130lb Marlin outfits - and no harness, rail or chair is used.

Capacity isn't as important as the fishing mentioned on this fourm so a large reel such as those used on game boats are not required (even when casting big tuna we still use a threadline but a thinnner diamter line to fit it on a large capacity threadline spool).

The threadline configuration is also much more stable than an overhead setup - the more it loads, the more stable it becomes (whether or not you can hang on is another story!).

I personally find it much easier and comfortable to work poppers and stickbaits with a threadline. Try to a hold of some and compare. You can see some footage here from Nomad that may help you to get an idea of what is involved... Shoalwater Bay with Nomad

Hope this info helps...