blaasoppie#1
Senior Member
Part 1
Friday night after work my driver and I hit the 9 hour drive from Tana to Mahajunga, beer in hand with some good tunes on the radio we were treated to an incredible sunset; it looked like the sky was painted!
Have had a tiring past week trying to recover from last Sunday’s fishing trip and some further late nights making up more wind-on leaders and assist hooks and still did not sleep on the road trip as I had to keep an constant vigil on my driver, I asked him if they had noted any abnormal condition in his recent medical check-up as I said I know for a fact that his accelerator foot is made of lead: after a while he finally registered what I said and slowed down for about 5 minutes.
I had noted on my tide chart that low tide was around 09h00 in the morning with high at around 16h00 so I knew that the morning jig session would be good for the first hour of light and would slow down further into the morning; 2[suP]nd[/suP] drop I hooked up with a nice AJ that looked like it had been seriously mauled by a Dog Tooth Tuna and next couple of drops resulted in a barracuda cutting off one of my new Turkey Slider R2S jigs.
Early morning AJ action; check how his head was mauled…
Lost this beast on the S517F…
Decided to concentrate on the 30-60 depth zones for this trip, but from 08h00 to 09h00 the only action was 2 very good fish lost so we moved out to 100m mark. There were some fairly good readings on the 100m mark and found this spot that went from 60m dropping down to 120m and back up to 75m over a very short distance which produced some good sized Rosy Job fish and the odd AJ. All the fish that I caught at this spot were full of small anchovy type baitfish which for me was unusual at that depth; this also made me think that my choice to put on a smaller 200g River2Sea Sea Rock was a good one as I was having constant action during this normally slow time of the day.
R2S Sea Rock 200g…
It is really tiring jigging on your own as there is no time for a break, if you don’t create a ruckus down there no fish is going to be interested in your shiny piece of lead; at one point I thought that if some sane (non jigging type) person had to see me they would seriously consult the Health Authority to have me put away in the mental asylum – drop, jig, jig, faster, faster, jig side stab left, jig side stab right, jig even faster, pause with little jigs in between (this is crucial, many strikes occur at this time), jig fast up, fast up, side stab left, side stab right, wham, ZZZZ, zzzzzzz, ouch groin pain ……totally nuts I tell you!
I used to skipper commercial squid boats during my study vacations and worked 4 lines at a time with a 4oz metal jig on the bottom with a floater about a meter up and the jigging action was exactly the same; if you just throw your dolly out there and let it sink with a few slow twitches they aren’t going to touch it, but jig it like mad varying the action on all lines and they attack it big time – the guys that worked their lines would catch 3 to 4 times as much as those that did not, so you gotta work that jig.
Shimano Blue Rose S517f in action…
Yellow Spot Trevally…
Tile Trevally…
More Tile Trevally…
Bonnie on the popping rod…
If any of you have a problem of catching too many bonito on your fly rod I have the perfect solution for you; I will just lend my fly rod to you and they will never come near your boat again…the freaking things were almost jumping in the boat last weekend and now that I had my fly rod on the boat they wouldn’t come within 80m of the boat!!
GT….
Bludger Trevally…
Horse Eye Trevally….
And another….
More GT…
AJ…
Something or another??..
Nice grouper taken on a leadhead and GS1 plastic…
Friday night after work my driver and I hit the 9 hour drive from Tana to Mahajunga, beer in hand with some good tunes on the radio we were treated to an incredible sunset; it looked like the sky was painted!
Have had a tiring past week trying to recover from last Sunday’s fishing trip and some further late nights making up more wind-on leaders and assist hooks and still did not sleep on the road trip as I had to keep an constant vigil on my driver, I asked him if they had noted any abnormal condition in his recent medical check-up as I said I know for a fact that his accelerator foot is made of lead: after a while he finally registered what I said and slowed down for about 5 minutes.
I had noted on my tide chart that low tide was around 09h00 in the morning with high at around 16h00 so I knew that the morning jig session would be good for the first hour of light and would slow down further into the morning; 2[suP]nd[/suP] drop I hooked up with a nice AJ that looked like it had been seriously mauled by a Dog Tooth Tuna and next couple of drops resulted in a barracuda cutting off one of my new Turkey Slider R2S jigs.
Early morning AJ action; check how his head was mauled…
Lost this beast on the S517F…
Decided to concentrate on the 30-60 depth zones for this trip, but from 08h00 to 09h00 the only action was 2 very good fish lost so we moved out to 100m mark. There were some fairly good readings on the 100m mark and found this spot that went from 60m dropping down to 120m and back up to 75m over a very short distance which produced some good sized Rosy Job fish and the odd AJ. All the fish that I caught at this spot were full of small anchovy type baitfish which for me was unusual at that depth; this also made me think that my choice to put on a smaller 200g River2Sea Sea Rock was a good one as I was having constant action during this normally slow time of the day.
R2S Sea Rock 200g…
It is really tiring jigging on your own as there is no time for a break, if you don’t create a ruckus down there no fish is going to be interested in your shiny piece of lead; at one point I thought that if some sane (non jigging type) person had to see me they would seriously consult the Health Authority to have me put away in the mental asylum – drop, jig, jig, faster, faster, jig side stab left, jig side stab right, jig even faster, pause with little jigs in between (this is crucial, many strikes occur at this time), jig fast up, fast up, side stab left, side stab right, wham, ZZZZ, zzzzzzz, ouch groin pain ……totally nuts I tell you!
I used to skipper commercial squid boats during my study vacations and worked 4 lines at a time with a 4oz metal jig on the bottom with a floater about a meter up and the jigging action was exactly the same; if you just throw your dolly out there and let it sink with a few slow twitches they aren’t going to touch it, but jig it like mad varying the action on all lines and they attack it big time – the guys that worked their lines would catch 3 to 4 times as much as those that did not, so you gotta work that jig.
Shimano Blue Rose S517f in action…
Yellow Spot Trevally…
Tile Trevally…
More Tile Trevally…
Bonnie on the popping rod…
If any of you have a problem of catching too many bonito on your fly rod I have the perfect solution for you; I will just lend my fly rod to you and they will never come near your boat again…the freaking things were almost jumping in the boat last weekend and now that I had my fly rod on the boat they wouldn’t come within 80m of the boat!!
GT….
Bludger Trevally…
Horse Eye Trevally….
And another….
More GT…
AJ…
Something or another??..
Nice grouper taken on a leadhead and GS1 plastic…
