Winter Kadavu Fishing Update

Its Wahoo Central now around Kadavu Island !
The Wahoo are thick and we are catching many Wahoo in sized up to 45kg (100lbs).

Magazine Editor Shane from Fishing SA Magazine with a 40+kg Wahoo

Vicki & Wayne (Mine's bigger than your's - Ooops) Nice one Vicki !

 Ben from Australia with a nice Wahoo caught trolling aboard Bite Me Too

Lance with a 40kg Hoo

The Wahoo are not the only species around. We are seeing some nice Pacific Sailfish mixed in as well as Mahi Mahi schooling a little off the reef.

Some anglers are even tossing a few popper at the reef and catching some great winter GTs

Vicki with a nice winter GT on Popper

The Wahoo will continue to be our main target species for the next two months as well as Sailfish along the outer barrier reef. We expect to still have great winter fishing well into October. With the water temp now hovering just above 24 anglers fishing offshore should also see some Striped Marlin and short billed Spearfish.

July Kadavu Update - Variety !

We are now well out of the normal summer GT Popping season and the Trades have started to push in but so far the weather has been reasonably cooperative - So much so that we are still throwing Poppers and seeing some nice GTs.

 Matt from Australia with a very nice looking GT

 Father Warren no slouch with a Popper rod either !

 Fair few Mahi Mahi around

 The big story for the next few months of course will be the winter Wahoo run. With the water temp now hitting 26C the Wahoo are starting to gather along the Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef. We expect a good season this year with Wahoo being caught as early as May and the first few Pacific Sailfish also showing. The Wahoo packs should grow to average 25-30 fish with an average size of around 60lbs.

Kadavu Fishing Update

Skipper Joe has been having some fun casting lures to surface feeding Yellowfin Tuna. Great fun for anglers and of course delicious shashimi for all the Resort guests !

Jarrod with a yellowfin caught casting poppers aboard Bite Me Too

 The winter Wahoo are moving in with some decent solitary fish and a few starting to school up.

 

 Angler Steve with a very nice 30kg Narrow Barred Mackerel

Just in case you were thinking of using a mono leader here in winter time.....Think again !

IGFA Anglers Digest Filming aboard 'Bite Me Too'

We have been delighted to once again welcome the IGFA Anglers Digest TV film crew to Matava Resort and Bite Me Gamefishing Charters. Show Host Bill Boyce was here a few years ago in the winter time for some insane wahoo & Sailfish action fishing with BlueWater Magazine Editor Tim Simpson. Bill set the new M-04 Fiji National Record for Pacific Sailfish and both Bill and Tim landed IGFA World Record Wahoo with Tim's fish just edging out Bills for the current M-04 World Record.

Tim Simpson's M-04 IGFA World Record

 This time around Bill and the team visited during the summer for some GT Popping, deep-water jigging and some summer species trolling and fished aboard our brand new 30ft custom fast offshore centre console Bite Me Too

Glorious weather and a trip out to the Kadavu Seamount found some nice Dogtooth Tuna on jigs, plenty of small Yellowfin and even a couple of marlin bites.

A nice Doggie caught jigging for guest angler Mike

 

Why they call them Dogtooth Tuna !

 

We even had a few nice early season Wahoo !
You can see the new show coming soon on the World Fishing Network or see some great sample video clips (some filmed aboard Bite Me) here : http://www.anglersdigest.tv/videos.html

The New Fishing Boat "Bite Me Too"

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 Offshore Fishing Boat Almost Complete

Work is well under way 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 Yellowfin 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 bookings for the summer season starting 1st January 2014.

I can’t wait to barrel out to the Kadavu Seamount and drop some jigs !

Fiji Winter Season Gamefishing Summary

Well we are pretty much done with the 2012 Fiji winter season now. I think it could best be described as um....lets say "Challenging". A second year of continuing La Nina weather patterns reinforced last year's unusual oceanic currents and higher than normal water temperatures. Last year's wahoo season suffered a bit but the double La Nina whammy just killed the normal spectaculor wahoo fishing here.

 

Peak Wahoo Season but La Nina intervened (again)

 
 The colder ocean currents that normally run West to North East along the Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef reversed direction and any wahoo that did venture into our unusually warm waters didn't gather into packs but simply moved on....We caught wahoo but the crazy 30-40 wahoo packs just didn't exist.

 A few decent sized solitary Wahoo were landed....

 

 

  But most fish were lean around the 20kg weight....Much smaller than normal

 The winter Yellowfin Tuna fishing wasn't to bad though. Occasionally a little patchy, it did produce some decent fish around 40kg aboard Bite Me. That's a decent size for the winter time. (Summer is when we see the really big 70kg+ Yellowfin Tuna)

 

 

 We did have some fun with the Ultra-Light tackle Avets & Custom Eyre outfits. Graeme above fought several Wahoo on 3kg line class as we targeted the M-03 IGFA World Record. We got one probable WR boatside but the fish was just a bit too green and made a last ditch run, ripping the leader through Joe's hand and snapping the Double. With so few Wahoo around we just didn't get enough shots to take out the World Record...

The winter Pacific Sailfish season was reasonable but not spectaculor... We did see quite a few large sails around 60kg and surprisingly, a fair few juveniles that couldn't have been more than 15kg !
Generally the sails here average around 40kg but this year seems to have been a year of extremes.

 All in all, a pretty disappointing winter Wahoo season compared to normal years. The good news is that the La Nina conditions are definitely now coming to an end. The general consensus in the scientific community is a possible reversal to an El Nino weather pattern.....In fact there are already signs on El Nino conditions developing in the Eastern Pacific.
The best Wahoo season I have ever experienced here was during the last El Nino event. Next season could well be the best Wahoo season in 10 years....A happy thought to end with.

New Shortbill Spearfish Fiji Record

Fishing report from Rick & Sheila from Australia who recently completed a live-aboard fishing trip aboard Charterboat Ika Levu. He writes;

The trip I just had was an awesome trip fishing from first landing and heading out wide to the inside of the Yasawa Islands. Then East through the Bligh Waters and onto Koro Island. Next we headed for Savusavu for a re supply. We then headed out wide and took a North direction and headed onto Taveuni, then further North to the Ringold Isles. We had a really good trip and will do something similar next year and hope to extend our trip from the 12 days this year to maybe 21 days next year and travel a further a feild.

Over the course we caught some nice Mahi Mahi to 20 kg, Spanish Mackeral to 23 kg, Wahoo to 25 kg,

 

Some large GT's, some big Rainbow Runner ( 14 kg ), a Blue marlin 130 kg, Short Bill Spearfish 24.8 kg,

Yellow Fin Tuna to 35 kg, the other Tuna Species and also Travelly Species, scad were around, barracuda in numbers, whales were very playful........so all in all we had a wonderful trip.

Its great to hear of successful fun fishing trips from all over Fiji, not just from our Kadavu neck of the woods !

Fame Anybody ?

We are arranging an opportunity for World renown photographer Jon Schwartz to visit us and photograph GT Poping aboard Tease Me this summer. We need a couple of GT anglers willing to model !
You have probably seen many of Jon's photos gracing the covers of publications such as Marlin Magazine and BlueWater Magazine. You can see some of his work here www.bluewaterjon.com
Jon will be taking action stills of anglers fighting GTs, posing with their catch and releasing, some of which will be filmed from underwater......


We need to fit this in between the 18th and 25th February. Matava Eco-Adventure Resort currently has a 'Special' on for February but it does not include Fishing Packages.
As this would not be a 'normal' fishing trip we are offering to extend this Special Second Person Half Price deal for anbody who wants to GT Pop on Tease Me and be photographed all day long !
Our primary target will be GTs, the bigger the better but if we see an opportunity to pop for yellowfin, wahoo or jig for dogtooth tuna and film that as well, excllent !

This is a great opportunity to get a ridiculously cheap GT Popping trip for two on the Great Astroabe Barrier Reef, Kadavu and be presented with your own professional photos of the trip. Oh, and you might get famous as well.
Drop us an email if you are interested.....

Ultra Light IGFA Wahoo World Record Hunting

Graeme and Owen fron South Australia spent a week with us at Matava Lodge with the intention of going after the M-03 Wahoo IGFA World Record. Owen makes a range of ultra-light custom rods and this was a great opportunity to put them through their paces on some relatively big fish.

We started off with a bit of a warm-up on some small yellowfin. Despit their small size, on 3kg line these yellowfin put up quite a fight.....Fortunately the guys had been practising on the Southern Bluefin Tuna at home so we were asured of some sashimi for dinner !

A couple of Rainbow Runners later just for a bit of variety...

and we were ready for the serious stuff....Trying to beat the current M-03 IGFA Wahoo World Record of 23.13kg caught in 1978 off Puerto Rico.

Graeme was up first using an Avet SX (Florida Cam) spooled with Platypus Pre-Test on an Eyre Toxic Wahoosta. We were using the best wahoo lure money can buy...The Halco Laser Pro.
After a fight of just over an hour, Graeme had his first prize....

A little shy of the World Record but what a great catch on 3kg !

Owen then had his chance using an Eyre Pirate These rods were hand made specifically for Bite Me and the finishing is beautiful. What's more they proved to be perfect for the job in the hands of an experienced angler.

A beautiful wahoo and quite a challenge on 3kg line

Graeme then hooked up and fought a feisty Mahi Mahi that would have smashed the Fiji National Record but just as Joe went in with the gaff the fish leapt out of the water (as they so often do !) and threw the hooks boatside.

Unfortunately the weather turned on us for a few days so we had to switch tactics. One of the advantages of the Pirate is its working range up to 8kg so we re-spooled with 6kg and headed back out. Owen got this nice Mahi Mahi, again using an Avet SX on a Pirate.


By the way, if any angler catches an IGFA World Record using one of our Eyre Custom rods they get to keep the rod....Or Owen will make them a brand new one for free ! Check out his website for details.

You have to experience the fun of fighting a fish like this on ultra-light tackle. Its a lot of fun for the skipper too !

The weather got worse so we spent the last two days fishing the calmer lee side of the island with the 3kg gear, in particular, the Ono Drop-off. After having a beautiful little sailfish jump and throw the hooks on us (bugger) we found some decent sized yellowfin. A bit too decent ! We fought two yellowfin for well over an hour and a half each only to have the line break just as we were getting close..... I have hours of GoPro video footage but I won't subject readers to blubbing anglers ! These yellowfin would have smashed the Fiji Record and possibly given the IGFA World Record a scare but it was not to be.
Anyway, we just missed out on the Wahoo World Record but had a lot of fun chasing it. The Eyre rods performed beautifully and now have a proven track record. I can't wait to have another go....In the mean time I might just mount them on the wall...They are that pretty !