Jason Tan and friends were our last group in November. The guys had fished with us previously in Trincomolee and Kirinda so they came well prepared for battle. They were stoked to be back and full of questions about the GT bite… unfortunately I didn’t have many answers! My previous group had the misfortune of fishing some truly abominable green water which had turned the fishing off and I was coming off a 2 day break, Nico was busy with a group who were Jigging more than popping and having such a great time catching Amberjack they hadn’t hit the shallows much so news was pretty scarce!
With all this in mind a battle plan was formed to pull a long shift the next day, working a search pattern along the 8 km stretch of Great Bass’s reef, hitting previously productive spots as well as some of the spots we hadn’t fished much. It was a slog but the guys toughed it out. Luckily the water colour had improved dramatically which made all the difference in the world. We had quite a few fish come up and hit the lures but they were some seriously rascally rabbits and we didn’t manage to boat any. This proved to be an unlucky trend for us the whole trip as we had great topwater hits each day for the length of the trip but only managed to convert a small portion of them.
After the first day we had a better idea of what to expect so we adjusted our plan accordingly, the oceanic current was running at a massive rate and with the wind blowing in the same direction it knocked most of the deep jigging areas out of contention, the boat was drifting at 3 knots at some stages. So we started each day as far east as possible and drifted the length of the two reefs starting in the shallows around the light houses, where we picked up smaller GTs, Bluefin Trevally, Bohar snapper and a fantastic Maori Perch and ended each day in the deeper sections looking for the bigger fish.
The guys had some great Micro jigging gear with them which was put to use throughout the day when someone wanted a break from popping. The amount of fish and variety of species was pretty much astonishing! We had hordes of Bluefin Trevally and other Trevally species, Snapper, Perch, Triggerfish, Coral Trout, Grouper and even a little Dogtooth. The guys had a great laugh at my expense when I had my arse handed to me by a black tip trevally which took me almost 20 minutes to get to boat.
I had a great time with the guys on a laughter filled trip and look forward to fishing with them again soon.
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