Evening, Just got back from a three day trip wi

O

Ocean Active

New member
Evening,

Just got back from a three day trip with my Dad and had some awesome fishing! The weather has been fairly bad and we had a strong wind blowing called a Shamal. So we delayed the trip, so it was not a great start. We finally saw that the weather was settling and travelled across to Dibba in Musandam to our villa GT House. We got all the tackle prepared and had a few drinks and sorted out our tactics, which the next morning were a bit fuzzy!

We have had some very big fish break off over the last month and with the fish we caught and saw last month with Suzuki-san we were very excited to throw our hardware at the ocean! I have been fishing my heavy gear all season with some big fish busting me up for a few different reasons but I was confident that we had the formula right and carried on with our tactics. We changed a few small things like our drifts and the speed we fished the lures and this seemed to do the trick.

Over the three days of fishing I caught a 50kg, 55kg, 52kg and a 43kg GTs along with a whole lot of smaller fish down to 18kgs. My Dad got a few fish in the 20-30kgs range and FC got some good fish with the biggest 42kgs. I think lady luck was smiling on me and I had my day in the sun. I think I'll be very lucky if I ever have GT fishing like this again! On the last day we were back in the marina by 14.00pm, we decided that we had our fair share of fish and that for once we had achieved what we set out to do and life was good and of course the beers waiting! This was as good as it gets!

Today the arms are sore, the back seems 5 inches longer and the sight of those buses hitting the poppers sit in my thoughts almost every second of the day. Beautiful!

Cheers,
Nick


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K

kitefisher

Sealiner
::SBrilliant Nick,dont think many people walking this Earth can claim a hat-trick of 100 pounders ,in just as many days,magnificent.

I noticed from your post when Suzuki-san fished with you that they were using leaders long enough to wind onto the reel when casting.If my eyes arent deceiving me ,your outfits look rigged in the same way (leader onto spool when casting).Do you mind sharing the knot that you use for this purpose,if indeed it is so.

Once again brilliant catches and extra special to have your dad with you in your "moments of glory."
 
O

Ocean Active

New member
Howzit Kitefisher,

Many thanks, it was a great trip and I think it'll be hard to top the quality of fish again, might have to look for a new challenge!

You right that Suzuki-san was using a wind on leader. He uses 200lbs hard leader and uses a knot that he has designed called the Fisherman knot, really great knot but a bit hard to explain. I'll see if he can give me a diagram. It is similar to a beauty knot that the ozzies use. This knot can be used for both jigging and popping which is great.

For our set ups we use a different set up and I don't like wind on leaders for a few reasons, I have had a lot of tackle failures where the braid joins the knot, as the braid gets chaffed when casting tghe knot out of the eyes and also with twisted wind on leader the way you join the leader, only has the strength of the single strand of the leader not double so no point in using a twisted leader. Then the last issue we have with wind on leaders is that you are casting a big knot through your eyes and this causes damage along with not getting as much distance with your casts.

We use a short leader that can be cast outside the rod and we use 300lbs leader (which you can't use as a wind on leader due to being to thick) and what I call a GT Knot. I find this set up is good for using heavy braid (130lbs Tufline Guides Choice which is a hollow braid) and thick leader. This set up enables us to cast heavy poppers quite a good distance and the gives us enough power to pull a big fish.

For the GT Knot we either splice a loop into the end of the braid or make a bimini knot with about a 5cm-10cm loop. I use 25 turns for the bimini. Then we take the 300lbs leader and we lie the leader against the bimini and twist the leader around both stands of the bimini and then take the tag end of the leader and pass it through the loop of the bimini. Then wet the knot, put on some gloves and pull both ends very hard to seat the knot. It is a simple and quick knot but takes a bit of time to get it right. I use this knot down to about 100lbs leaders, leaders lighter than this I have had the braid pull through the leaders on big fish.

Hope the above makes sense!

Cheers,
Nick
 
D

Def-e-nition

Sealiner
Absolutely Brilliant imagery .Brilliant .
Those Are Massively Beautiful fish .
That would qualify as a range-topper fishing Trip , for sure .
Lucky sod .
 
O

Ocean Active

New member
Hi Kitefisher,

Those are the knots. Just a couple of things that are different for the set up is the "Yucatan" or GT Knot is that we use a lot less twists because the shear size of the leader so I find 5 twists are good. The main part of the knot is getting the knot closed, so when you pull the knot together make sure that you give it a quick hard pull. We usually use two people both with gloves and try pull the other person off their feet!

With the Fisherman knot the only difference is that when we tie the bimini we leave a long tag end and then cut the bottom of the bimini loop so that we have three tag ends of equal length coming from the bimini knot. We then twist each of the three tag ends inbetween the palms of your hand individually around 50 times anti-clock wise. Once this is done place all three of the tag ends together and gently pull the tag ends so the three tag ends intwine together. Once this is done tie a granny knot in the end of the three twisted tag ends and go ahead with the Fisherman Knot. Now this is not easy and takes a bit of practice but that was the way Suzuki-san showed us and it works well but you need time. What we normally do is use this knot for jigging and just use a single strand if we are in the rush.

Cheers

Nick
 
O

Ocean Active

New member
One last thing was it is important to leave a bit of a tag end and burn the tag end with a lighter and dab it with the end of your finger to form a bit of a "mushroom" so that if the knot slips it will hopefully hold.

Cheers,
Nick
 
O

Ocean Active

New member
Nepps, next business trip you have over here buy your mommy a big present and pull in for a few sessions! We are almost at the end of the season due to heat, but start up again in Sept and the big kingfish (SA Couta) will show up around mid September till end November along with some good GTs!

Cheers,
Nick
 
K

kitefisher

Sealiner
Nepptune wrote:
Nick - Like I said on 360tuna, you make me ill..... :)

AWESOME!
Click to expand...

@Nepptune

Wearing the same colour green than I am today, Nepps,lol,must agree yet again, it is some magnificent catches.

Thanks for the info Nick,got them sorted and stored away.
 
F

FREE THE FIGHTER

Senior Member
Top,top result Nick, three 50's and a 40 - superb stuff - great fish - congratulations !!

It seems like you had mostly trebles on you stick bait/poppers ? What size/ make do you use ? What is your connection from leader to lure - swivel/split/knot used there ?

Many thanks
 
O

Ocean Active

New member
Hi FTF,

We use two different set ups for the stickbaits/popers, we use trebles and then also we use big singles usually 12/0 jigging singles, for the set up we put one single on the back of the stickbait with two split rings with a swivle so that the hook is free to turn and move, we then attach two singles back to back with a cable tie and then this is attached with a split ring to the front of the stickbait. The two singles are attached together with a cable tie so that the cable tie can break when fighting a fish, this helps with hook ups and also so the fish cannot get any leverage on the hooks like what happens with trebles to dislodge the hooks.

For the trebles we use Gama GT Recorders, Decoy and Owners. For Singles we use Owner and Fisherman hooks. For the rigs I used on this last trip was two 10/0 Decoy trebles with squashed barbs, very big hooks but we were trying to catch big fish and it worked which was good.

On the heavy gear we connect the leader (300-400lbs) with a figure of eight knot which is connected to a swivel and split ring of around 300lbs. The split ring is attached to the lure so we can change lures quickly and so the line does not twist when fishing the lure. On lighter leaders up to 200lbs we use a new set up which is the leader is passed through a small piece of hollow surgical tube (4cm) and then through the swivel and split ring. The leader tag end is then passed through an aluminum crimp on the main leader line, the crimp is crimped so that the surgical tube is cushioning the leader against the swivel. This is a quick and easy set up and very strong.

Hope this makes sense.

Cheers,
Nick
 
F

FREE THE FIGHTER

Senior Member
Thanks Nic - excellent info. Confirm the tubing is basically just a knot/chaffe protector for the leader through the eye of the swivel and does not also go back up  inside the crimp ?
 
O

Ocean Active

New member
The surgical tubing does not go back up into the crimp, it is just to protect the line and also allows you to use lighter leader for popping. We usually use 300-400lbs but have now started to use 220lbs because of this set up.

We get more action out of the lures and also have a higher strike rate, or so we think........fisherman always have an answer or excuse for all topics.......

Cheers,

Nick
 
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