Aloha. Just returned from a 8 day 7 night trip to this Atoll. This trip was arranged by Frontiers Travel of which there is an office located in the UK as well as the US. We stayed at the Captain Cook Hotel in the bungalows. They are currently doing some upgrades to the Hotel including air conditioning and drinkable water in some of the bungalows. Drinking water is provided in pitchers in the room refridgerators. 3 meals per day were provided, lunch being sandwiches you make to take with you while fishing. The fishing guides are provided by the hotel but if you like you may contract other guides on the Island but there are not a lot of these guides, to my knowledge.
My friends and I chose 2 days of boat fishing(Popping) and 4 days of shore fishing. The shorefishing was what we really wanted to do being that it is very similar to what we do here in Hawaii. We used "light" rods of 8'-10' with 20-30lb test braided lines on spinning reels to go after bonefishes and trevally in the lagoons and around the reefs. We also took extra heavy duty casting and spinning rods of 12 1/2'- 13 1/2' with Penn Senator 4/0 reels loaded with 60lb test monofilament. The spinning reels used were Daiwa Saltiga 6000Z and Stella 20000PG loaded with 150lb and 100lb powerpro respectively. From the shore area we caught 4 GT ranging from 20lbs to 44lbs. We also caught numerous other smaller trevally with almost all fishes released. Bonefishing was enjoyable and easy, easy, easy, on the lighter rods but they weren't very abundant due to the wrong moon phase whcich we were fishing. Overall in my opinion, this is the type of fishing we came for, and while not up to my expectations- a lot of this due to our lack of a plan- was worth every penny. The type of fishing we were doing will work in either rough or calm conditions and the weather was great thruout. The nearshore conditions were calm, considering the open sea in front of you and the lagoons were.......like a lake.
Now for the part I think will interest most of you on this forum. The boats used are canoes with an outrigger attached. 3 persons can fish comfortably but if the fish runs the wrong way you may have to hand the rods around the boat. Some of the rods used were primitive according to popping standards but they worked. My set-up was the Stella and Saltiga mentioned earlier coupled with a New Daiwa Saltiga Ulua Popping rod rated to 80lbs. The other setups were an old Fenwick Surfstik 9' with Penn 7500SS loaded with 30lb monofilament and an Ugly Stick with an Okuma Reel (Style unknown) loaded with 80lb PowerPro. On day one we went to a submerged reef about 25 minutes from the dock and started popping. The conditions were calm. I was using a YoZuri surface cruiser in green mackeral and the other 2 were using Gibbs pencil poppers in a green color with black tiger stripping. After about 5 minutes of tossing out lures we got a double strike. Mine came in first after a 5 minute battle, a small one at 19lbs. The second one took longer, about 20 minutes, and weighed in at 32lbs. About 10 minutes later a third one was caught and about 30lbs. After this I got extremely sleepy but the other 2 kept on going catching 7 more ranging from 20-30lbs. Some large ones were raised but never were hooked up or missed the lures on the strike. This was all over the course of 5-6 hours and moving to different areas. Enjoyable for the others but a trial for me. LOL.
The second day was more for me to have a chace to recover lost fishing time as I was feeling much better. We travelled to the same area as the first day and within 45 minutes of reaching our destination I had boated and released 2 GT around 30lbs. and missed one estimated at 60+ lbs. I had changed to a YoZuri Surface Bull GT in Blue Mackeral and had gotten the majority of the action while my friends continued to use the tried and true Gibbs but with only a few chases and no hookups. After this we moved into the lagoon area to try for snappers using our same rod and reel combos but using cut bait. We caught lots of snappers and a 32lb GT.
For me and my friends the trip was successful even though we had hoped for larger and more GT. Locating our previously scouted shore fishing areas were our downfall.....not finding the right spot till the second to the last evening of our trip. Had we had another day at this spot I am almost positive we could have got what we were after...........but that's fishing.
OK. How much did this all cost? We came up with $3200.00 USD each with everything included except tips and fishing gear. Worth every penny to me. Will plan for this again in a year or two. I will include some photos as soon as I can figure out how to add them. Sorry for the long post. By the way....the staff at the hotel we terrific considering what they have to work with.
Good Fishing.
Mark
