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 !

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...

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.....

Prime Slot opens up for Anglers

Matava Eco-Adventure Resort was totally fully booked with divers for early January however it has just had a cancellation from the 1st to the 10th January 2012 opening up some accommodation space.
This means that Bite Me Gamefishing Charters now has a slot available for any anglers who might wish to charter Bite Me or Tease Me between the 1-10th January 2012

During our summer season we so some offshore heavy tackle gamefishing but mainly we focus on heavy tackle popping for GTs and deepwater jigging for Dogtooth Tuna.

You might want to hit the Gym before you come...

Joe likes to work out using Doggies....

We get a summer run of yellowfin tuna and the conditions are often ideal to pop for yellowfin

Yellowfin boiling on glassy seas....a typical summer sight

Weather conditions are usually hot, humid and calm, ideal for working outer barrier reef slopes with poppers for huge GTs and deepwater jigging.

If anybody is interested, please drop me a line at adrian@GameFishingFiji.com