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 !

First Blood

The new boat Bite Me Too went into action with Joe skippering taking out Peter & Sophie from Australia for a bit of trolling, GT Popping and Jigging on a couple of half days.

 

Peter came with the right GT Tackle

 First GT !

 A nice Bluefin Trevally for Sophie

 

A bigger GT for Peter

 A little doggie caught trolling

 Peter jigged up a bigger Dogtooth Tuna

Just to keep the other Resort guests happy.....Dinner !

The Yellowfin Tuna are now starting to move in with several big schools close in to the outer Barrier Reef. Still around the 20-40lb size but the big cow Yellowfin won't be far behind.
We still have openings for bookings in March / April and Matava Resort has some crazy Accommodation Specials available so drop us a line here !

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 !

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 !

Prime Slot opens up for Anglers

Summer Dolphinfish are numerous

Matava Eco-Adventure Resort was totally fully booked with divers for early January however it has just had a cancellation from the 1st to the 10th January 2012 opening up some accommodation space.
This means that Bite Me Gamefishing Charters now has a slot available for any anglers who might wish to charter Bite Me or Tease Me between the 1-10th January 2012

During our summer season we usually concentrate on offshore heavy tackle gamefishing for blue marlin and yellowfin tuna or we focus on heavy tackle popping for GTs and deepwater jigging for Dogtooth Tuna.

Summer time is usually when we see the larger blue marlin

The summer Yellowfin Tuna run is when we get the big cow yellowfin

Yellowfin boiling on glassy seas....a typical summer sight

Weather conditions are usually hot, humid and calm, ideal for offshore gamefishing, working outer barrier reef slopes with poppers for huge GTs and deepwater jigging.

If anybody is interested, please drop me a line any time at adrian@GameFishingFiji.com

Fiji Winter Season Saltwater Fishing Summary

From the beginning of 2011, the South Pacific experienced strong La Nina weather patterns. Warmer than normal water gathered towards the Western side of the Pacific leading to unusual weather conditions. Normal tropical depression and Cyclone paths shifted West and Australia's long running drought was broken. For the Fiji Islands this meant fine weather but frequent large ground swells from the South West. Normal oceanic currents along Kadavu Island's Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef stalled and the GT Popping season was significantly affected with coloured water outside the barrier reef and GTs moving from regular haunts.


The summer yellowfin tuna run started late but by the end of March, Bite Me was landing excellent yellowfin around 130lb with our best fish weighing in at 165lbs.

Our normal winter Wahoo season begins with the first wahoo packs arriving in May and by June the outer reef slopes are crowded with hundreds of wahoo packing up on reef points and current lines. Not this year. Water temps stayed stubbournly higher than normal. Our June water temp was the highest recorded for that month in 15 years....


Nevertheless we did get a wahoo run, just not as crazy as normal years. Packs averaged 10-15 fish rather than 20-30 and the average size was down from 60lbs to around 40lbs. The Kadavu Seamount proved very patchy wahoo fishing. Some days it was loaded, some days quiet. Very unusual indeed.


The Pacific Sailfish didn't disappoint but with unusual current directions along the reef and a scarcity in normal winter bait, they moved around a lot making my job a little harder than normal. Still, we did manage to take the M-06 (12lb) Fiji National Record with a sail of just over 75lbs.

The new M-06 Pacific Sailfish Fiji Record taken aboard Bite Me

The La Nina weather patterns usually only last 9-12 months so by December, the start of the next summer Popping & Jigging season, we should be back to normal. Looking forward to it.

Yellowfin Sashimi for Hong Kong

With the new direct flights between Hong Kong and Fiji operated by Air Pacific, we have been delighted to welcome more and more guests from that part of the world.
Manny and Cherry stayed at Matava Eco-Adventure Lodge for some diving, snorkeling, adventure and of course...fresh sashimi !

Even small Yellwfin put a fight on light tackle

Cherry hangs on...

Mann looks forward to his sashimi

Bite Me Takes Fiji Sailfish Record

The Eyre rods and Avet SXs - Our ultra-light tackle Record hunting gear

Australian anglers Steve, Peter and Paul came to Matava Eco-Adventure Resort recently to fish light and ultra-light tackle on the winter wahoo and sailfish. We fished 3kg line class for wahoo and tunas and targeted Pacific Sailfish on 6kg line class.
Steve brought with him a new Cam now available from Avet. Called the South Florida Cam it modifies the Avet SX drag curve to perfectly suit our ultra light tackle record hunting.
The wahoo fishing was slow thanks to La Nina weather patterns but the guys did pick up some National Records including the M-03 Kawakawa and Yellowfin tuna. Deckie Glen was clearing rods after a multiple yellowfin hook-up when a chuky skipjack tuna jumped on. Turned out his skippie smashed the current M-03 Fiji National Record when it weighed in at 8.6kg

Deckie Glen chuffed with his M-03 Skipjack Record of 8.6kg

The boys hooked and fought several sails on 6kg but the sails continued to elude us with spectaculor leaps and jumps across the ocean (We have some great video to post when I get to a faster connection !)
On the last day we went all out for the M-06 Sailfish Record. Fishing Soso bay Paul hooked up a nice sail and we went into action....Winning back the belly of line, charging backwards after the hard fighting fish. With both Joe and Glen aboard to handle the leader and gaffs we finally had the sail aboard after about a 45 minute fight.

What a cracking Sail for Paul on 6kg line class

The sail weighed in at 34.20kg and subject to FIGFA approval and line testing is the new M-06 Fiji National Record

The new M-06 Fiji National Record

Sails Move In

Rob grabs a quick photo of his Pacific Sailfish

Continuing La Nina weather patterns have lead to the warmest winter water temperatures recorded in the past 15 years. The wahoo started moving in late May but the cooler currents failed and the wahoo fishing has been very quiet by our normal crazy winter standards. The winter run of yellowfin tuna is also pretty mediocre. The sails though are providing some fun on lighter tackle.

Deckie Glen releases and the tagged sail swims away