Djibouti

[Johan de Vlieger]

I've been on a trip to the east-Africain country Djibouti last april.
We've (3 anglers) caught about 14 different specie's (barra, thasard, queenfish, grouper,etc..) and 49 Gt's.
Fishing was not that easy, we had to put a lot of effort in our catches.
Problem was that they had a relatively (!!) "cold" winter and as we were the first fishermen of the season the schools with baitfish weren't there yet
It's also a hard environment to fish in  : dust, dust and more dust.  Last time it rained over there was 4 years ago...
The poppers of Orion (mainly the T-rex and Frasier) did a great job as did the Hp-tail from Fisherman.
No problems with the Carpenter Wild Violence but the Lesath XH from Shimano I tested out proved not to be so XH : it came back in a few pieces more than the original.
Range of most Gt's was varying between 20 and 30kg, no monsters but nevertheless big fun.
Maybe I'll go back but otherwise...New Caledonie is very tempting
Greetings,
Johan.

P.s. we've caught some very "dark" almost black Gt's : are those another kind of trevally ??

[Andre van Wyk]

Very Nice Johan..... Looks like you guys had a great trip with some great fish... thats a good sized Queen fish and Cubera too.... Can't be many places in the world that will deliver both Cuberas and GT's outta the same water, or not many that I can think of off hand anyway....

The Dark/Black GT's may be just that, darkly coloured GT's which one gets from time to time, and are just a different colour varient of the GT, or they may have been Caranx Lugubris, a Black Jack. However Black Jack's are generally a Deep water species and seldom caught on Poppers, in fact I've never seen or heard of one caught on a popper, but quite regularly on jigs... I may well be wrong though.., and off hand I'm not sure if they occur in the Djibouti area.... its quite likely they do as they are very widely spread in their range, but are not really heavily populated anywhere...
Without a picture it would be tough to tell...

This is a Black Jack - Caranx Lugubrus


Congrats on a great trip and thanks for the report!

[Johan de Vlieger]

Thanks for your reply Andre !
If I look to the picture of the black jack I believe that it must have been those we caught.
I'm going to ask my fellow anglers if they have a picture of one in their possesion, if they do I'll post it here so you can decide on it.
The trip we did was along the shores of Djibouti but recently they have started up a location between the mainland of Djibouti and Jemen.
The place is called "Les Sept Fr?res" (Seven Brothers), seven islands surrounded by deep dropoffs and a lot of current.
The catching average overthere is awesome : easily more than 150 Gt's a week with 4 anglers and many of them above 30kg with the biggest caught near the 60kg !
The French guide that fished over there has caught on one occasion more than 10Gt's in the morning ...from the shore of an island, biggest one 35kg...
Problem with that location : completely isolated (advantage too), very hard conditions (sleeping in tents, hardly no fresh water, extreme high temperatures), close to Jemen (pirates and other scum), just available to go to in mai or june (months before to windy after june reaching temperatures up to 50? and more with no cooling down at night).
When I read the story's about New Caledonie (I have contact with Denis Lelong, amazing catches, and also another friend the french guide Olivier Charpentier has done some incredible fishing over there) I'm tempted to book with "Poissons Banane".
On the other hand : flying to NC is 27 hours and the trip will cost me over 5000? when Djibouti is only 7 and a half hours away and cost me about 3200?.
Tough decision !
What's also very appealing by Djibouti it's the virginity of the islands.
Jigging has hardly been done over there and I'm quite confident there must be doggie's around. Divers has also reported groupers they estimated well over...100kg !
The group that was fishing over there last year even got two strikes from sailfish on the popper but failed to hook them up.

[denis]

hi johan,

il est bon de s'entrainer ? Djibouti avant de se rendre en NC ....

les GT sont deux fois plus grosses et deux fois plus m?chantes.....