I was told
that the best chance to catch monsters would be to head towards the
pacific. We quickly put a trip together with cautious optimism as our
usual guide hasn't fished with this charter and have only heard some
good feedback from a few angler.
This destination's sometimes called the 'Jurassic Park' for
game fishing as it is filled with monster fish as well as sharks. Plenty
of frickin sharks. Like a plague in fact. Our aim is to land some
decent GTs and past reports have shown that this is the place to find
them by the quantity as well as quality.
The
tool for the job would be an easy pick. A Stella or a Saltiga is the
way forward. I opted for the Shimano Stella SW18000 as it was on sale.
Just like any reel that I plan to fish, new or used, I'd surely strip it
apart and prepare them for battle.
|
Shimano Stella SW18000, getting ready for battle preparation. My favourite knob to go with it. |
|
Plenty of rubber seals for water proofing. Top side drag houses 3 pieces of carbon fiber drag discs. |
|
Bottom
stack drag consists of 2 super size floral type carbon fiber drag
discs. Brand new drags from Shimano has decent amount of drag
lubrication, so there isn't a need to open the drag system up. |
|
Line
roller assembly. Plenty of space left to be packed with marine grease.
Note that the line roller shaft has been updated with a stronger and
durable material. The weight difference between this shaft and the old
aluminum based shaft is obvious. |
|
That's right. Pack em all with marine grease. Eliminate any space available for water intrusion. |
|
Insides
are bone dry. Not to my liking. Time to coat all surfaces inside for
better water displacement in the event that water to get in. A
prevention redundancy. |
|
Shimano's rather stingy with their quality heavy grease. |
|
Nicely coated, Bearing's packed too. |
|
More heavy grease spread on all mechanical moving parts. |
|
My favourite round knob's in and ready to battle monsters. |
Typically
for monster hunting trips, it's best to have a back up set for quick
switching between lures. Or in the event of a bust off, you spend more
time fishing than retying your tackle. A friend was kind enough to loan
me his older Stella as he will not be using it anytime soon. Hence the
need for battle preparation too as this reel was recently bought used.
|
Smooth spinning, drag's a little worn and just needed cleaning and new coat of drag grease. |
|
Knob bearing's smooth with no signs of rust. Marine grease packing is in order. |
|
Similar designs as the new black Stella with plenty of rubber seals. |
|
Similar designs for the bottom stack drag system. |
|
Line roller's smooth and marine grease packing to fill'er up. |
|
Rotor
lock nut and bearing's in excellent condition too. Spins smooth with
plenty of grease left inside. Rubber seal's working fine for sure. |
|
Dry
insides with no signs of salt crystals build up. No water intrusion
before, just need a coat of marine grease as redundancy protection
against salt water intrusion. |
|
Rotor lock nut's bearing is now packed with marine grease. |
|
The
main gear's covered in some unknown grease as it may have been serviced
or injected through the service port before. Best is to degrease and
contact cleaned before giving it a new coat of marine grease. |
|
A
mixture of different types of grease spread across the internals.
Degrease and contact cleaned for new coat of marine grease. It seems
like the grease is heavily gathered around the service port, most likely
grease being shoved in there. |
|
One-way bearings in excellent and smooth condition with no back play. Best is to leave it as per. |
|
All internal parts contact cleaned surface preparation for new marine grease coating. |
|
This Stella is in excellent condition, ready for battle. |
|
Drag's
are also in excellent condition upon cleaning with plenty of stopping
power. Loaded with 100lbs braid, ready for some monster action. |
Somewhere
in the pacific, we were greeted with decent weather but the wind picked
up over the next few days of fishing. The boat was a twin hull and was
very stable even with occasional gust of 15 knots wind. 5 days of
popping and not a single GT for me. The other guys on board only managed
a handful of GTs with only 2 breaking the 30kg barrier. The captain
were baffled as to where the GTs have gone as we fish around the outer
reef. We suspect that they were breeding and are hanging around the
inner reef. Our notion weren't much of an influence as we were told to
pop on around the outer reef hitting most of the other species, except
GTs.
|
The
only monster I managed to hook onto was pesky sharks. They were
everywhere, they destroy tackle, they tax your poppers and they
constantly trail the back of the boat for scraps and distressed fish on a
hook. |
|
Plenty of red bass, at least half of what's left of a red bass. Lucky Feed Pin150 popper to have survived to pop another round. |
|
Another hook up. PE12 rod bending action. |
|
Another red bass. No GTs in sight. |
|
Feisty coral trout doesn't like this Feed Spear120 pencil splashing about near its feeding hole. |
|
Another red pest. No GTs. |
|
Feed Pin150 scores another lunker of a coral trout. |
|
More red pest. |
|
Red b-ass. |
|
Head on collision for the red bass on Feed Bell120. |
Some
nights were awesome when we are anchored around the shallows where
there are reefs nearby. No big GTs but some of its smaller cousins on
ultra light gear does put a little bit of smile on our faces too.
|
Island trevally on IMA gun jig. |
|
Triple hook up on ultra light gear. |
|
MONSTER hard tail scad on Xesta's Afterburner mini jig. This thing peels line like a freight train. |
|
Schooly trevally on IMA's Ichimatsu jig. |
|
No GTs around the shallows meant that we are to search the deep. We went jigging and found some bottom dwellers. |
|
Lunker groupers lifted from around 100m of water ain't fun. Xesta's slow fall jig slow emotion flap. |
Occasionally,
we'll see some tuna feeding frenzy. These frenzy come and go very
quickly but when we do react quick enough with the boat properly
positioned, we'll be able to send our poppers in their way for some
lightning speed yellow fin tunas.
|
Multiple
hook ups, multiple hook throws and as we continue peppering our poppers
near the frenzy, we'll occasionally get a proper hook up. |
|
3 other guys landed yellow fin tunas and I manage to find a 20 odd kg spanish mack among the yellow fins feeding frenzy. |
|
Spanish mack roe. Weighs in around 2kg. |
|
Spanish mack fillet in under a minute. Deckie's super efficient in dismantling the fish. |
As
the trip draws closer to an end, we were headed to some FADs for some
light action. These FADs are quite far out and they reach up to 1.2km
deep. Fish around the FADs also smarten up real quick and you'll most
likely get a hook up on the first few tries with no more takes
thereafter.
|
Light casting brought this bull mahi-mahi up. This one will be made into our dinner sashimi salad. |
|
Another mahi-mahi courtesy of Jackson's Pintail minnow. |
|
Another FAD another dorado. This one took the Jackson's Muscle shot magnum. |
|
When the dorado smarten up, some bonitos would be willing to take on the Jackson Pintail. |
|
Some of the mahi-mahi's got serious eggs. |
|
Roe for supper! |
|
Mahi-mahi sashimi salad in the making. |
4
anglers, 5 out of 7 days of popping yielded less than 10 GTs in total, 4
lappers in the high 20s or low 30s. We still believed that we should
have explored the inner reefs after the 1st 2 days without much GT
action but we were told that they are only gathered around the outer
reef and yet puzzling enough with none found.
When we did
score the few lapper's, we noticed that were either in the shallows or
near openings into the inner reef. Occasionally, we do spot big GTs
riding the surf hitting poppers with a few smaller GTs chasing after the
big GTs. The most likely explanation to our knowledge is that they were
breeding.
To further add salt to the wound, as we were
waiting for our flight at the departure hall, 2 other seasoned anglers
spotted our fishing gear and was curious to know how our trip went. The
minute we explained that we spent 5 days on the outer reef with no big
GTs in sight, they immediately pointed out that the GTs were most likely
hanging around the inner reef as they've had similar experiences
before. Add more salt here, rub, and burn.
Monster
hunter reels didn't find any monster GTs. They will live to serve
another day in search more opportunities in different parts of the
world.