Big Fish!

The fish weighed in at 90.60 Kg on our Certified Scales (Matava Resort being an IGFA Weighstation) and is a pending new Fiji National All-Tackle Record. www.GamefishingFiji.com

May GT Popper casting Report

The Fiji Autumn has seen some excellent popper casting and deepwater jigging conditions which have lead anglers to some great fishing around Kadavu island.
Frequent GTs over 30kg and several over the 40kg mark. We are averaging about 10 GTs per angler per day with numerous other species thrown in as by-catch such as Bluefin trevally, emperors, green jobfish, grouper, big barracuda, mackerel and all the other usual tropical reef popper predators.

ALthough we have mostly concentrated on the popper casting, we have also recently been doing quite a bit of exploring with the jigging gear using 50lb and 80lb class tackle. Its a good opportunity to take a break from hours of working big poppers and have some fun with the jigs.

The outer reef slopes around Kadavu have offered up some spectaculor dogtooth tuna. Average size has been around 75lbs but the trophy fish of the month goes to angler Bill Busch from the USA and his monster 90Kg doggie. A new Fiji All-Tackle Record.

New Pending Fiji All-Tackle National Record Dogtooth Tuna

The best poppers recently have been the big I cup Hammerheads, Craftbaits and FCLs. Colour has not seemed to be so important in the past month but we have noticed that lures with banding colouration (eg orange/white/orange/white bands) don't seem to be doing so well drawing less strikes.
The poppers are still outperforming the stickbaits by at least 4-1. Seems the GTs here still prefer a big noisy crashing popper to a twitching swimbait.

The bite is still good but we expect the weather conditions to turn more breezy as winter moves in and there won't be so many of those glassy calm days in the coming few months. Whilst Bite Me will tend to do more light tackle fishing on the wahoo and pcific sailfish, we will still be throwing a few poppers when we get the chance.

Please note that it is our policy to release all GTs.Bill Busch gets ready to release a healthy GT

GT Popping Forum - Kadavu Fiji http://www.gtpopping.com

Just came back from Kadavu, fishing on the the Great Astrolobe Reef. A beautiful place with some gts on popper and a few fish on jigs.

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Doggie was probably between 35 to 40kgs. Biggest gt was around 35kg. We were fishing in pretty slack currents, so not ideal for gts. Jigging at the seamount was pretty good. I had my doggie take my hooker jig pretty high up. Was actually reeling up my line when it took.

My wife Jac had a big fish take when she was dropping her 400g nagamasa. She couldnt close the bail arm and we tried all we could to close it but when we did, the line busted off. The fish was just taking alot of line and we couldnt slow it down. Not sure what we could have done to get her started on the fight.

MarkR had a huge bust off on a big gt. The line was unfortunately loosely spooled in by the shop and it dug in and busted off.He lost his lucky craftbait.

We were fishing with Adrian on his boat Bite Me. Great skipper and boat. Matava resort was really nice too - nice food and good bunch of guys, but you might want to bring a portable fan and your insect repellant.

Only the big mouth poppers worked - craftbait, hammerheads, big jim. Surprisingly, big foots and other stickbaits didnt work. They liked red, green or pink poppers.

Jigs were around 300 to 400g in the deeper spots (150m). You could get away with 200 or 250g jigs in the shallower areas. Sevenseas hookers and nagamasas worked for me.

Kadavu Fiji

Giant-Trevally.com - Legend of the Giant Trevally (GT)

according to: luke wyrsta

The Caranx Ignobilis is to me, the most beautiful and awe-inspiring fish in the sea. They embody the meaning of 'strength' in the world's oceans.

Due to my obsession with a fishing technique known as 'surface popping', my exploits nearly always have something to do with the mighty GT.

I created this website with two things in mind:

1. To provide useful information and the knowledge of others about the mighty GT.
2. Just to add part of my contribution to the preservation of the mighty GT. Being, an angler - this includes strictly catch and release fishing coupled with appropriate fish handling and care.

I sincerely hope all visitors to this site will be able to gain some useful information and insight into the GT and may help others to care for this fish as much as I do.

Giant-Trevally.com - Legend of the Giant Trevally (GT)

April Anglers Pro Shop Popper & Jig Trip

Wish you were here ?

The latest Popper casting and jigging trip aboard Bite Me organised by Anglers Pro Shop just finished today and was a resounding success for all anglers. Over 6 days of fishing, some 50 GTs were caught and released by anglers Randy Chin (APS), Bill and Anto. The first 2 days the weather was a bit ordinary and kept us fishing on the North side of the island. We still managed to catch plenty of GTs to 30kg as well as some nice dogtooth tuna to 35kg. Day four, the action exploded with 16 GTs on the poppers in the morning and 4 dogtooth tuna on the jigs in the afternoon. The largest Dogtooth went 90.6Kg and is a pending All-Tackle Fiji National Record.

Days 5 and 6 were spent racking up the GT numbers as well has having a bunch of fun with a whole host of other by-catch such as Emperors, red and green jobfish, giant grouper (all released) bream and amberjack.