Our first group of the 2015-16 season was 3 widely travelled anglers who had between them some very large fish such as Cobia, monster Tarpon and not to be left out a huge foul-hooked leatherback Turtle. Fishing on the newly repowered Rampage, the guys were here to give the Andaman Islands a bash with popping, jigging, trolling and some bait fishing.

Popping is something you need to get used to as you work different muscles. It always happens that by the end of the trip you have better casters on board and we worked with the team to improve their technique, suggesting what lures to use and how to work them better.

The guys were easy and were open to trolling and bottom fishing in-between periods of popping and jigging. One afternoon session, after a couple of misses in the morning and few fish on the troll we decided to give a couple of our new spots a go as there were lots of flying fish being harassed. We had a massive GT come up on Mick’s Ballista Bull popper but it missed. Dave and Denver also had hits and landed some smaller GT so we did another drift. A couple of casts in and there was this massive crash again on the Ballista and we were onto a big fish that put some hurt on Mick and a good fight later we boated a 135 cm by 110 cm GT 45 kg, Micks biggest GT and the strongest fish he has fought so far was his comment. We had some big Dogtooth follow all the way to the boat but were unlucky they did not take the lures.

Early in the season the fish are not at their normal places so you need to search a bit for them, this we did and this time in shallow water the guys got absolutely annihilated at one point it was GTs 6 and Anglers 0 this was even with locked down drags, Dave went 4 to 0 with the GT’s in 4 casts at one point. Big fish in shallow water is not easy on the wallet for sure!!

With lots of big fish around the smaller ones were mere compensation. Jigging produced a few small doggies and one good fish but it just kept going and cut Denver off. Once the top-water action is on there really is nothing like seeing that bow wave with a black shadow come up behind your lure or the surface explosion of a GT attack.

Species Caught: GT, Wahoo, Dogtooth, Sweetlip, Yellowspot Trevally, Coral Trout, Jobfish, Grouper

Tackle Used: Temple Reef Ronin, Shimano Rods, Reels Shimano Stella, Saragosa

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