Australian anglers Craig & Nick poped over from Melbourne for a few days gamefishing on Bite Me last week. Looking for some variety with a real mixture of species.
We started off on day 1 with a trip out to the Kadavu seamount with the heavy tackle and jigging gear. Conditions were less than perfect but good enough. Small schoolie yellowfin and skipjack tuna were busting up on the surface so we began our doggie hunt with a 5kg yellowfin livebait on one of the heavy tackle marlin rods.
Joe drops back the circle hook rigged livebait Unfortunately, within minutes a small hammerhead shark moved in and after a brief tussle, departed with our livebait. Time to switch to jigs...
Nick loads up A bit of searching with the sounder and we found a deep school of bait. Soon after Nick was hooked up and into a nice doggie....
Then it was Craig's turn to hang on tight
We were all thinking 'doggie' but when we finally got the fish to the boat we were all astonished to see a huge
Rosy Jobfish - the biggest I have ever seen !
Craig's monster Rosy Jobfish Nick went on to land a similar jobfish but then the currents changed, the bait moved off and it was time to head back.
Nick was on a mission to tag his first
blue marlin so after day 1 we continued day 2 with the marlin gear, 50lb stand-up off the riggers and 130 chair gear off the corners in case a big summer blue came across our spread.
Nick connected to a blue on stand-up 50lb gear
We worked the North side of the Kadavu Trench and around 3.00pm we finally had a blue crash into the Moldcraft Wide Range on the long rigger. The 90-100kg marlin charged forward at Bite Me but quickly vered off to the left allowing us to gun the throttles and give chase.
About 25 minutes later we had the blue to the boat. In went the tag, a few quick pictures and high fives all round for Nick's first tagged blue marlin.
Any day you tag and release a blue marlin is a good day fishing !
Part 2 of Craig & Nicks visit to follow when we switch to the Popper Casting and target the GTs !
