Monster hunter Stella without monsters.

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.