Early GT Popping Season Results

Le makes do with just the bare essentials.....

Regular GT Popping angler Le from Australia came out last week with his wife Catherine and baby Tang for a few days of R&R and a very early pre-season look with the poppers on heavy tackle aboard Tease Me.

Not long before Le is into the GTs

Mas hauls in a nice GT for Le

Catherine demonstrates that the whole thing is really quite easy (What's all the fuss about ?)

Pretty good first GT

Le on Bite Me one day hooked into a good fish but unfortunately the hooks pulled out in the deep water. We were mostly trolling that day but Le did land a PB Barracuda on the popper.


On the last day the weather cooperated and Le and Joe headed out on Tease Me to some new virgin reefs. Le named this reef Stella Reef.

Le's new PE12 Ripplefisher loads up on a nice GT

GTs coming thick and fast

Stella Reef produces some great fish

Le's best fish of the day measured 45' Short Length and 36' Girth so estimated to be around 32-34kg. On that last day Le landed 14GTs, a new boat record for a single angler.

August Starts with Mixed Weather...and a Mixed Bag

The past week the weather has been somewhat challenging. A strong Tradewind with frequent rain squalls gusting to 30kts..... Didn't stop us fishing of course but virtually ruled out jigging and limited our popping options to the calm side of the island and barrier reef.
We are fortunate enought to always have a lee shore, no matter what the weather brings but sometimes the winter weather just makes popping and jigging tough.
This is why we tell all our popping and jigging gusts to come in the summer time.....

Rain squalls not a problem on the lee side

Mind you...even in the lee of the barrier reef it got choppy....

Great weather for Mackerel

A few Yellowfin around

Dave Christens his new Stella & Hots Gipang 75XXH

This big Barracuda loved his Cubera

Some very good bull Mahi Mahi around

Adam with a nice GT on the popper

Past few days Species

The decidedly unseasonal and rather 'ordinary' weather has led to us picking up all sorts of species as we work inner lagoons, barrier reef passageways and more sheltered drop-offs on the other side of Kadavu Island. Anglers Joseph, Ande and Jonathan from Singapore were unlucky with the weather but made the best of a few bad weather days...

Barracuda on a Popper

Rosy Jobfish on a jig

one of the better GTs on a Popper

Mangrove Jack on a jig

Bigeye Trevally on a jig

Barracuda on Poppers

Generally speaking, barracuda are not all that popular aboard Bite Me. They tend to make a complete mess of carefully rigged baits and wreck expensive skirts on trolling lures.
They can also make quite a mess of an expensive popper....
Consequently, if Joe identifies your popper or stickbait as a "Cuda Catcher" and you go ahead any use it anyway...and you then present deckie Joe with 10 kilos of writhing snapping teeth gnashing cuda on the end of your leader.....the penalty is a quick dump in the ocean....

Ozzie angler Tim pays the price

Joe has a bit of extra fun bawling "Shark !"

2 GTs on One Popper !

Anthony & Doug from Australia had some fun with Kadavu Island's big GTs but topped the fishing off with something that not many people have done. Doug had several GTs fighting over the same popper and managed to hook up two on the same popper....at the same time....


Doug fought them to the boat and presented deckie Joe with a tricky problem....how to slide in two GTs through the transom door at the same time whilst Doug pondered on how he was going to hold up two GTs at the same time !



Unfortunately, or fortunately, one GT flipped off the hooks just as Joe hauled them gently in...

Doug with one of two we did manage to get aboard before release

A relatively rare catch of a Long Nosed Emperor on a 130g Buffalo Popper

Anthony with one of many Kadavu GTs

A not so rare catch of a Barracuda on a 115g Buffalo Popper

A healthy looking Red Bass

We even ended the last day tagging a beautiful little sailfish....