blaasoppie#1
Senior Member
I am sure there are many of you that have been stuck in a place when the ocean is too rough to go out to sea or there are no boats or you are on a family holiday on which you promised not to go fishing ; well not all is lost as the Blue Fin Kingfish is always within a short distance from your hotel room if you are in the tropics and they offer brilliant sport no matter what the sea condition; the rougher it seems the better.
Last year I went on holiday with my family to Isle St Marie which is an island on the east coast of Madagascar and I had some serious fun on the Blue Fin Kingies; I always look for a channel in the reef which has some white water breaking into it and these spots seem to be the favorite hangout of these powerful game fish. The lures that worked best for me are the 2oz keel spoon, 2 oz clear chisel nose plug and 5†jerk shads.
The coral is unbelievably sharp and I took my crocs with which was such a bad idea as the coral sliced my feet a couple of times and I got a full sea urchin through my foot.
The best tide to fish isle St Marie is low tide, as you are quite far out on the reef and on the high tide it is too deep to stand. On the semi high it is extremely difficult to land a fish, as they cruise in the gap in the reef and as soon as they hit you they dive into the gully and cut your line. One afternoon I lost 5 lures in about as many casts; I was using my Graph-cast 1 with 30 lb braid on my Stella 8000 and those fish take drag like its nothing in the white water.
Transport to the reef is by dugout canoe and the local dude that took me was Flourio (fluoride toothpaste; he is always smiling) who always wears his springbok rugby cap and normally charges about R50 to take you out to the reef. Flourio was very unhappy with me that I let the fish go, but I did keep some for him on the odd occasion.
Flourio’s day off and I wasn’t going to push that pole!
There are 2 gaps in the reef and I only saw the 2[suP]nd[/suP] when we flew over the island on the way back to Tana and it was a lot bigger than the gap that I fished so I will have to go back again to fish that spot.
There are big GT’s there too for sure and my mate said he bought a 30kg GT from a local who was fishing near my spot about a month ago. I normally check out the gaps in the reef on google earth and it is a really handy tool to find the best spots.
Just a warning – the off shore ocean fishing around Isle St Marie sucks and after 5 days of fishing on the boat we did not have a single strike; I think the commercials have cleaned the place out although there are times during the year that they have goo runs of king mackerel. We did have a lot of chases casting towards the shore on the islands on the east side of the island and I picked up a couple of Blue-fin, but it was fairly difficult handling the boat in the strong winds.
If you do go on holiday to Isle St Marie September is whale season and I have never in my life seen so many whales in one spot before which is very cool for the family.
Blue-Fin kingies; gotta love these fish!
Last year I went on holiday with my family to Isle St Marie which is an island on the east coast of Madagascar and I had some serious fun on the Blue Fin Kingies; I always look for a channel in the reef which has some white water breaking into it and these spots seem to be the favorite hangout of these powerful game fish. The lures that worked best for me are the 2oz keel spoon, 2 oz clear chisel nose plug and 5†jerk shads.
The coral is unbelievably sharp and I took my crocs with which was such a bad idea as the coral sliced my feet a couple of times and I got a full sea urchin through my foot.
The best tide to fish isle St Marie is low tide, as you are quite far out on the reef and on the high tide it is too deep to stand. On the semi high it is extremely difficult to land a fish, as they cruise in the gap in the reef and as soon as they hit you they dive into the gully and cut your line. One afternoon I lost 5 lures in about as many casts; I was using my Graph-cast 1 with 30 lb braid on my Stella 8000 and those fish take drag like its nothing in the white water.
Transport to the reef is by dugout canoe and the local dude that took me was Flourio (fluoride toothpaste; he is always smiling) who always wears his springbok rugby cap and normally charges about R50 to take you out to the reef. Flourio was very unhappy with me that I let the fish go, but I did keep some for him on the odd occasion.
Flourio’s day off and I wasn’t going to push that pole!
There are 2 gaps in the reef and I only saw the 2[suP]nd[/suP] when we flew over the island on the way back to Tana and it was a lot bigger than the gap that I fished so I will have to go back again to fish that spot.
There are big GT’s there too for sure and my mate said he bought a 30kg GT from a local who was fishing near my spot about a month ago. I normally check out the gaps in the reef on google earth and it is a really handy tool to find the best spots.
Just a warning – the off shore ocean fishing around Isle St Marie sucks and after 5 days of fishing on the boat we did not have a single strike; I think the commercials have cleaned the place out although there are times during the year that they have goo runs of king mackerel. We did have a lot of chases casting towards the shore on the islands on the east side of the island and I picked up a couple of Blue-fin, but it was fairly difficult handling the boat in the strong winds.
If you do go on holiday to Isle St Marie September is whale season and I have never in my life seen so many whales in one spot before which is very cool for the family.
Blue-Fin kingies; gotta love these fish!