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 !

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...

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

GT Popping & Jigging -January 2012 Fishing Report

The 2012 Summer season of GT Popping started with a bit of a damp fizzle. Whether it was the excssive rainfall and freshwater run-off from the island or the often sizable swells and breezy days, the GTs were not especially helpful. Some days we would get a few, some days they would follow lures but not bite, some days they were just invisible. In 8 days of popping and jigging we managed to scrape together about 35 GTs of various sizes, the biggest of which was around 30kg (sorry, didn't get a pic of that one)

Angler Grant from South Africa with an unusual Black coloured GT

Sebile Stickshad in blue chrome

One thing was very clear though, right now the GTs are definitely much more interested in stickbaits than poppers. We did get some action on the Buffalo poppers but the stickbaits were outfishing all the poppers 5 to 1.
Top of the stickbait list - The Sebile stickshad. These lures in various sizes were just dynamite. Also worth a mention were the ASWB Reefs Edge floating Mamool stickbaits, Adhek Goby and Penipen (from Bali), the Bobara and dogtooth (Nomad or Heru) and working wery well, the Jai which our recent anglers sourced fom Elite Tackle. (I only mention that as I have heard nothing but good things about this store.)

Steve from Australia releases another nice GT

Brett from South Africa with a popper caught Mackerel

We caught a number of big Longnose Emperors

The ever present Red Bass

Conditions were often a bit um..challenging....
Our new guide Alex doing a great job...

The Yellowfin are here !!! (and a lot of fun on stickbaits !)

On the jigs we have been catching a nice range of species. No monsters yet but good variety.

Rosy Jobfish

Dogtooth Tuna

Almaco Jacks

Um.....Dunno....Snapper family ? Help me out here.....

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....