Hamad and his friends had been here last season for their first experience with the Andaman GTs and they were back to have another round. The guys run a tackle shop back in Kuwait and had the brands they had in the shop to try out as well as some new lures. There were a couple of guys in the group who had never caught GT’s before and all of them were pretty new to popping and jigging. This was the first big combined group we handled this season and with the amount of tackle the guys had to try out rigging up the first day took a while.

Aziz and Hamad made the plan for the rest of the group to follow after discussing with boat skippers and we set of the next day a bit later than planned after a good breakfast. As is usual on the first day the guys were getting used to the conditions and casting with 4 people on the boat. Instructions were given to spread the lures out when casting open water drifts and how not to get in each other’s way, we landed quite a few GTs, Twin spot Snapper and a Grouper with a nice 25kg GT topping the day and two bust offs on much larger fish.

The group was after both GT and Dogtooth and we planned to hit as many spots as possible for best results with these two species. We decided to split the boats up for the next day’s fishing and focus on different fishing at each part of the tide. We managed to get Dogtooth on both topwater and jig although not in the sizes we wanted with the largest being 18 kg on topwater and 20 kg on jig with mix of a few yellowfin, other trivially and sharks to add to the species list.

Shifting the area again with both boats fishing together we immediately found the fish in numbers. There was continuous action both on topwater and jig and the GTs were so thick that we were struggling to find the bigger ones and ended up with two GT’s in the 25kg range and two in the plus 30kg range, so we had an exhausted bunch who returned vowing to head back to that spot again.

The next day was again a GT rampage with more fish over the 30kg mark and numbers being racked up on both boats. The group decided to switch their attention to Dogtooth Tuna and focus on jigging the last two days. The guys decided to try early starts and later returns. We had the dogtooth with a few up to 20kg and one massive unstoppable fish that finally bust off on the reef after taking over 90 meters of line off the reel on near full drag.

When we did our final calculation there were 144 GTs landed between the boats, you really can’t ask for a better initiation to fishing in the tropics and getting you addicted to popping and jigging.

Tight lines.

Tackle used:

Rods: Temple Reef, Ripple Fisher, Carpenter, Patriot Design for popping | Jigging Master, Ripple Fisher and Temple Reef for Jigging

Reels: Shimano Stella, Saragosa Daiwa Saltiga, Catalina

Lures: Poppers – Carpenter, Cubera, FC Labo, Hammerhead, Temple Reef | Jigs – Seven Seas, Hots

Species Caught:

GT, Dogtooth, Yellowfin Tuna, Twin Spot Snapper, Grouper, Golden Trevally, Big Eye Trevally, Jobfish, Barracuda, Long nose Emperor, Rusty Jobfish, Blue fin Trevally, Rainbow Runner

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