A complete glass off in spectacular surroundings.

Transcription

1 A complete glass off in spectacular surroundings. An Harry and the FWA crew head to Indonesia to check out the deep sea fishing and chase the elusive dog tooth tuna. This is some serious deep water jigging that produces some phenomenal catches and on many occasions the fish are so aggressive they will smoke you in a second! 40

2 The Elusive Dogtooth Tuna I t had been a few years since I had last been to Indonesia, namely Bali! So when the opportunity came to go there on fishing / filming trip thanks to Garuda Indonesia and Indonesia Tourism I jumped at it. Who wouldn t! Although Bali is best described as one of WA s most popular holiday destinations to relax, shop, take in the sites and party, it is often overlooked by holiday makers as a fishing destination. In the past I had heard some great stories of fishing in Indonesia with really big dogtooth tuna around Flores, along with ruby snapper, big amberjack, Spanish mackerel and a host of other fast pumping, lure snatching species. Like any good fishing trip some extensive research needed to be done and the Internet became a very useful tool to find, locate and narrow down the fish we would be targeting and to put the Part 1 B y H a r r y B a um a nn 41

3 In the past I had heard some great stories of fishing in Indonesia with really big dogtooth tuna around Flores, along with ruby snapper, big amberjack, Spanish mackerel and a host of other fast pumping, lure snatching species. WA techniques to the test in foreign waters. So now I am in full swing trying to arrange a trip to Indo. First up I found a company over there called Marlinesia, you can visit their website at marlinesia.com/. These guys were fantastic, very organised and prepared for anything. After a few weeks of discussions we finally decided on a trip that would go something like this. Fly to Denpasar (Bali) and stay overnight in Kuta, in the morning grab a flight to Kupung! Don t An entourage of dolphins as we leave the bay 42 ask me exactly where this place is as it was only a short stopover for a few hours and we were straight onto another flight to Alor. Alor was our starting point of this magic trip. The trip was to go for around 6 days starting from Alor and ending in Komodo, an overall journey of 400 miles living on a boat. I have experienced a few trips to Asia before, so I was most impressed when we arrived at the docks to see our boat; a 43ft Flybridge which had 2 twin Detroit diesel engines. This was a very comfortable boat for the next 6 days, so we soon loaded up the 400 bags we took with us (Ryan had 390 of them) ha ha! Our first stop was about a 4hr steam off the coast of Alor where we were going to get that elusive dogtooth tuna. The 4hr steam gave us heaps of time rig our gear and were we very keen to break in our new FWA jigging rods. Ryan went with the spin outfit while I stuck with the overhead. Once we had arrived it was late in the afternoon around 4pm, we didn t have much time so we got straight into the jigging. This was hard work and my puny little arms started to suffer after about an hour of jigging gram jigs in anywhere between metres of water. But lucky for us one of the kind deck hands which I nicknamed

4 Harry gets whacked on the first drop. Windup was so happy to wind the jig up if we were moving spots! Which was good as it saved my puny arms a little! Well it didn t take us long before we got into the action with Ryan having several hook-ups, and man am I talking about hook-ups! I just couldn t believe the size of the fish we were hooking into and well let s just say I was impressed with the new FWA rods, as they loaded perfectly and were so bent over they were nearly touching our toes! We had lost a few fish by the fish just absolutely smoking us but Ryan did manage to hang onto 1 and we were all getting very excited in anticipation that we may have our first dogtooth tuna onboard. But it was not to be as the fish got closer to the surface we noticed it was a big rosie snapper. Now this is not a catch to sneeze at and was very impressive. As we were getting smoked and I started to think our gear was not good enough! Our setup went something like this: Ryan FWA rod PE 6-8 Spin Reel Shimano Line PE 80 pound Leader 150 pound Jig grams 43

5 I just couldn t believe the size of the fish we were hooking into and well let s just say I was impressed with the new FWA rods, as they loaded up perfectly and were so bent over they were nearly touching our toes! Deep sea jigging in these waters is great fun and produces all sorts of fish species. Harry FWA rod PE 6-8 overhead Reel Shimano Trinidad 40 Line PE 80 braid Leader 150 pound Jig grams But after having a chat with John our guide he assured me that this was ok but could go heavier. Now I m thinking if we had gone any heavier it wouldn t be much sport... besides we didn t have anything heavier! This was the end of day one as the sun was setting very fast, my arms hurting and I was in the need of a cold beverage or two. We started planning for the next day as we were steaming all night to arrive at our next spot which was still off the coast of Alor! Well at least I think it was. Morning came way too quick for my liking and it was all Ryan s fault! He kept on talking all night! Now you have to remember that we arrived in Indo in mid November which is very hot

6 Ryan loads up the new FWA rods and puts them to the test. and humid, so first thing around 6am it was already 35 Degrees with about 100 humidity and a complete glass off. What a great day for fishing... I think. After breakfast we headed off to our first drop starting in 80 metres of water and fast moving into 200 metres and with the current being so strong we were finding it hard to know if we were hitting ground. We jigged for many hours with not much luck and I was starting to think this was a very stupid idea as my arms were killing me for jigging. Even with Windups help! Ryan decided he needed a break and that was ok it was me! It was 40 + degrees and time for lunch, so we decided one more spot and one more drop before we had a bit of lunch. So of course Murphy (Murphy s Law) decided to show up didn t he! First drop on the new spot and WHAM dam nearly got pulled over board and was wondering what the *&^% was that! John our friendly guide proceeded to inform me that I was well and truly hooked up to a good doggy. Let s just say that the fight didn t last long! It peeled off about 100 metres of line and then just PING! Ok now rigging isn t my favourite thing, probably because my knots suck Harry & Ryan set for an adventure 45

7 Alor was our starting point of this magic trip. The trip was to go for around 6 days starting from Alor and ending in Komodo, an overall journey of 400 miles living on a boat. 46

8 so John me MATE! said he would do it and for me while I was having some lunch and trying to get my heart rate down. Silly John should not have done that as he was now stuck doing my rigs for the rest of the trip. Bewdy!!! As John was doing my rig and me trying to have a feed Ryan was hooked up as well with the same result arms nearly torn out of its sockets, 100 metre run then PING!. With a little bit of food in me, a new rig which I m sure was stronger and another new $70 jig, I was confident the next doggy was on toast, he was all mine and going nowhere but the marlin deck... ha ha how stupid was I! It took all of about 90 seconds, that s how long it took for the jig to reach the bottom. Stop, 3 big jigs, then WHACK! Nearly overboard again arms ripped out, back, sore knees smashed against the gunnels and oh yeah me screaming It took all of about 90 seconds, that s how long it took for the jig to reach the bottom. Stop 3 big jigs then WHACK! Nearly overboard again arms ripped out, back sore knees smashed against the gunnels like a girl!! It went something like this, Oh Crap! Oh Crap! Oh Crap! Help me mummy and then PING!!! Somehow I think I was happy about that breaking off! But this just got us fired up! It s amazing how once you are onto fish that you don t feel the pain in your arms, legs or back! Or even the need for food. So both Ryan and I were back into it with little sleep and little food we were pumped and were not going to give up until we had a doggy on board. We would spend the next 5 hours in very much the same spot; the current was not as strong as it was in the morning. Sitting in about metres of water time after time we were hooking up to these massive fish with no success. We had trying everything we could think of, I even tried using wire as they were swallowing the whole jig and biting through the 150lb leader. But they somehow know you are using wire I didn t get a hit! Change back to a mono leader and bang on again. DAMN those doggies. So after jigging for 11 hours straight we were both rather stuffed, the sun was setting in the distance we cracked a few and pondered what we did wrong counted our losses... Man it was that many I even had to hit up the skipper for his jigs! Well the end count went something like this 24 hook ups 18 jigs lost NO fish! This was not a good result but we had a hell of a time, once we were back in Perth John our guide was glad to inform me that the next trip he had taken out some renowned Japanese Fisher Matsutani-san. He took him to the same spot and lost 50 jigs! And no dogtooth! Now that made me a little happier. All I can say is, I will be going back and I will have my revenge! 47