Its been a tough season weather-wise, the worst I can recall in 8 years of gamefishing around Kadavu Island waters. January was great but the next 4 months were a mixture of cyclones, big swells and out of season tradewinds. Not what you need when you are trying to park a 7 ton gamefishing boat 30 yards from the outer barrier reef breakers... Even so, we managed a lot of nice GTs nudging 100lbs and a fair few doggies aboard Bite Me and Tease Me, the best of which were around 65kg.
Here are the Top Ten GTs on poppers this season (at least the ones I got a half decent photo of)
Not in any particular order....
Congrats guys, you popped hard and saw the best fish.
As for the hot poppers this season, the popper that accounted for the most fish was the Cubera. 150 or 180, they are relatively easy to work, pop well in all conditions and proved themselves over and over again.
Also fishing well were the usual top suspects - the FCL Labo EBIPOP, the Craftbait Megamouth, the Hammer Heads, the Halco Haymakers and the River 2 Sea Dumbell 200 poppers.
Full Scale was a newcomer this year with some Australian anglers and proved very tough and effective.
Buffalo lures were on test on Bite Me. Some early models had paintwork issues and have been changed but all proved themselves tough enough for the GTs here and have caught many fish. Not had one single failure.