Winter GTs

Winter is normally the time of year we concentrate on the Wahoo and Sailfish packs but the winter weather has allowed us to keep doing a bit of GT Popping...

The GTs are here all year round of course but the winter can often be windy limiting our access to the best outer barrier reef breakers. Not so much this year ! Anglers here to target the Wahoo & Sails are also finding they can toss some poppers and land some nice GTs !

Albacore Record aboard Bite Me Too

Skipper Joe took angler Boyang Zhang out for some deep-water jigging last week aboard the new boat Bite Me Too. Great weather meant ideal jigging conditions and Boyang made the most of it hooking up and landing a 19.6kg Albacore setting a new M-36 Fiji National Record.

 That's a monster Albacore !

The very distinctive Pectoral fins on an Albacore

A very good Fiji Record catch for Boyang and of course - very good eating for all the other guests at Matava Resort !

GT World Record Released

Last week skipper Joeli took angler Kenneth from Singapore out for some GT Popping on the brand new GT boat Bite Me Too.
Using a Dogfight 6500 on a Carpenter Blue Lagoon and GT Mania lure, Kenneth fought a huge GT for over 25 minutes until Joe could finally grab the leader.

The fish measured 57 Inches (short length) smashing the current IGFA All-Tackle Length World Record however, because of the long fight, Kenneth elected to snap one quick photo and get the GT back in the water as soon as possible. Joe swam the fish for 5 minutes before a healthy release....
Nice one guys, commendable !

The New GT Popping & Jigging Boat

Bite Me Too Delivered !

Our brand new fishing boat Bite Me Too is now at the Resort and we are running in the engines and seeing just how fast she can go. The answer....Very !

Skipper Joe winds up the brand new Mercury 4-stroke 150s and she takes off...

Cruising at 30kts, we can now park on the Kadavu Seamount in under an hour....

Furuno Chartplotter, Sounder, VHF Radio, Lifejackets for 8, comfortable seating for six, plenty of rod storage, tackle boxes, ice boxes and even a head !

She is now ready for our summer GT Popping and Jigging season.

Drop us a line here if you want to be one of the fist to  blast around Kadavu Island !

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 !

Kadavu Fishing Update

The GT fishing recently has been pretty modest by our standards. We have been having to work harder than normal with La Nina weather patterns still affecting the ocean current directions along the outer barrier reef.  Mark & Yaniv from the US fished recently and Mark was kind enough to let me post a few pics from their trip.

 Dogtooth Tuna on a Jig

 

Coral Trout on a Stickbait

 Always fun the Red Bass

Mangrove Jack !

Not really any Kadavu Monsters in the mix but a very nice variety of species on both Poppers and Jigs. Hope you had fun guys...

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....

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