The New GT Popping & Jigging Boat

New GT Popping & Jigging Boat Almost Complete

Work is almost complete on our brand new offshore sportfishing boat Bite Me II being built by BlueWater craft in Navua, Viti Levu. She will be a 28ft go-fast go-anywhere fishing machine designed to perfectly service the growing GT Popping and deep water jigging specialists as well as offer anglers the opportunity to go after pelagic gamefish such as marlin, Pacific Sailfish, yellowfin Tuna, Dorado and Wahoo on stand-up tackle. Powered by the very latest Twin 150 Mercury 4-strokes she will cruise at 25 kts and be capable of reaching 35+ knots at WOT.

Sister Ship

Our vessel will be based on the above design however we have added a number of modifications to suit our fishing around Kadavu Island.

The main hull is complete with the large centre console going on now.

With a 400L in-floor fuel tank she will be very stable for casting and jigging and have extensive range.

We have specified grab rails at the perfect height for safety and ease of casting poppers

There will be plenty of rod storage

and of course easy access transom door for hauling in a big Dogtooth Tuna or sliding in the big GTs for release !

I will be personally supervising the finishing touches and loading all the required brand new safety equipment in a few weeks and we hope to have her in Marine Survey and in service by the beginning of December. We are now taking GT Popping & Jigging bookings for the summer season starting 1st January 2014.

I can’t wait to barrel out to the Kadavu Seamount and drop some jigs !

IGFA GT Record up for Grabs

As most anglers will be aware, the IGFA now has a new Record Catagory - The All Tackle Length Record. This is strictly a Release Catagory so all eligible fish must be released in healthy condition.
 As we release all GTs caught here, this record catagory is ideal for us to have a go at the World Record.

Wait ! Measure that !

The current record is 107cm so about 42 Inches, held by Patrick Sebil
We have released plenty of GTs larger than that... This season we will be measuring all the big ones with our brand new IGFA Length Scale !

For those of you aware of the hand made custom Eyre rods we use on Bite Me, you might like to take a quick look at the new Eyre Nano Technology GT Bone Popping rods. I expect them to compare well this season against the top end Ripple Fishers and Hots...

This fish would have taken the IGFA Length World Record !

 

Feb 2012 GT Popping & Jigging Update

 GT Popping

So far this summer the bite has been reasonably good on the calm summer days but relatively quiet on choppy days. With all the January flooding on the main island there is a lot of debris in the water and the GTs are not consistently hunting in the barrier reef breakers. On some days we have been catching more GTs on jigs than on poppers....

 

   

 

 

Matt from Exmouth Tackle World caught this cracker of a Yellowfin Tuna using his a Daiwa Saltiga and custom popping rod. The fish ate an assist hook rigged stickbait over the Kadavu Seamount.

Depwater Jigging

We are getting the usualy range of species jigging the barrier reef drop-offs. Plenty of Dogtooth Tuna but so far this season, no real monsters to brag about !

 

  

 A MONSTER Coral Trout for Aaron from Australia

 Jigged up Grouper for Paul

 

 Sometimes the GTs go deep and we get quite a few whist jigging for other species

 Big Rosy Jobfish on the Ono Drop-off

 as well as the usual Long Nose Emperors

Pre-2012 Season GT Popping Report

Its still early days yet with the summer Popping and Jigging season starting in December but a couple of anglers from Australia caught a break with the Spring weather and got some great GT Popping in.

Justin's pretty pleased with this 45 inch short length GT

Red Bass

Double Hook-upfor Brendan & Justin

Another nice GT pushing 40kg for Justin

Last season the Pacific Ocean experienced a strong La Nina event. This meant that higher than normal sea surface temperatures were experienced in the West Pacific, particularily the Coral Sea. Tropical cyclones derive their energy from the warm oceans so most cyclones developed to the West of Fiji and tracked away from us. For us this meant good weather but frequent large ground swells from the South West as cyclones track south to the West of Fiji. The weather patterns stalled the normal oceanic currents that sweep along the Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef and the water clarity was poor compared to a normal season. We countered this by switching primarily from poppers to stickbaits as the GTs tended to sit out in deeper waters rather than their usual whitewater breakers zone.
The NOAA weather gurus are forecasting another La Nina event this year but it is expected to be much weaker than last year and shorter lived.



The above chart from NOAA shows current sea surface temperature anomolies. You can see the La Nina effects with a big slug of warmer than normal water in the SW Pacific and cooler than normal sea surface temperatures off the Americas.
So, all in all, we are expecting fewer than average cyclones for Fiji this summer and a better GT Popping season than last year.
Not such good news for Queenslanders....Expect above average numbers of cyclones this summer....

Kadavu GT Popping Update

We had an unusual summer of popper casting for GTs with the La Nina weather paterns making for unfavourable conditions and sometimes a very poor bite by our standards.
On a normal summer season day with a couple of anglers popping we expect around a 10 GT average and 15-20 on a hot bite day. This season we averaged about 5....

One after another, summer tropical depressions came by to the West of the Fiji Islands on their way South. Normally they sink by us to the East. These tropical lows sent some sizable South Westerly swells that churned up the inner lagoon water...which emptied out of the passageways. They also stalled the current that normally sweeps along the outer barrier reef bring clear oceanic waters. So coloured water emptied out of the lagoons...and just stayed there with little or no current to clear it away.
The solution aboard Bite Me - Stickbaits !
In a normal year we generally catch 75% of our GTs on poppers...This year we landed at least half the GTs on stickbaits.

The Nomad Wahho & Dogtooth stickbaits were very effective

Also the Orion Bigfoot in Fusilear colour

The best poppers this season were still the Cuberas, Craftbaits, Buffalo, Orions and of course if you have the cash..FCL and Hammerheads...

Cubera / El Toro still produced

Even so, some late summer season anglers did get some reasonably good GT fishing with most fish averaging 15-20kg and a few bigger ones around the 25-30kg.

Now that's a seriously long pencil for a Bluefin Trevally !

March 2011 GT Popping - More Pics

Some more pictures from Mario, Allan and Marinco's GT Popping trip to Matava Eco-Adventure Resort on Kadavu Island. Fishing aboard Bite Me Gamefishing Charter's inshore popping boat Tease Me. Pics courtesy of Mario. All fish released of course after a quick photo.

Best fish of the trip for Allan

Marinco, Joe and Mario

The weather was sometimes a bit choppy but that didn't bother the boys

The best lures that week seemed to be the black Buffalo D or the Hammerhead in purple / Silver

Late March GT Popping Report

Returning regular popper casting angler Le returns for another crack at the Kadavu GTs. This time with fellow fisho Matt from Australia.

Matt with a nice Kadavu GT

The weather was a bit average, some swell, a day or two of thundery rain showers...

Made an interesting back-drop view from the outer barrier reef slopes

The bite in general was a bit slow on some days with some unusual current directions and coloured water closing down some of our favourite stretches of reef but an improvement in the weather meant access to some rarely fished areas. (Joe's secret spots) At the right tide time the bite was good.

Matt leads in a GT aboard Tease Me

Le with a darker colouration GT

Just some of the boy's weaponry

Best fish of the week was this nice GT over 30kg for Matt