Slow pitch & long fall jigging at Pulau Jarak.

To usher in 2014, we kicked it off to a jiggy good start at Pulau Jarak. A 3 days 2 nights easy going trip with a bunch of like minded enthusiastic anglers. It's been a while since the last time I set foot on the all too familiar GT Chaser with its leathery clean and hardy deck. We kept reminding ourselves that every trip to Pulau Jarak will never be the same and all we can do is to be prepared for almost anything and everything.

This time around, we managed to have some good fun with a variety of feeding frenzies and the occasional awkward deafening silence of no hook ups for hours.

We did however manage to document some interesting catches. Here's what we call slow pitch and also long fall jigging. A technique used in combination of the target species, jigs used, and most importantly to pace ourselves between the intense high pitch jigging.

On the first day jigging at depths of around 60-80meters, to our surprise the only fish that was fond of our sexy jigs were the GTs even around the seabed. GTs after GTs. The fun wore out rather quickly as it wasn't fun trying to haul GTs up from great depths. No other species were around or taking out jigs, we'll just have to put on a brave face, keep calm and keep cranking.

Majorcraft Giant Killing's jig rod fully loaded. This rod is a force to be reckoned with.

Xesta jig deemed too sexy for this GT, worked at moderate speed.

Another on falls for the Xesta, also worked at moderate speeds taken on the fall about 5 meters off the seabed.

Double hook up on Shout jigs. Stay and Width jigs. Worked slow taken on the fall.

The Gees kept hitting, this one went for the new Xesta Agraam, worked fast and was stopped like hitting a freight train.

Up close of the Xesta Agraam speed jig.

On day 2, we went popping around Pulau Jarak shallows and yielded just 1 take. Weird GTs here taking jigs and not poppers or stick baits. For hours we went around and about, no more hook ups. We then headed a little bit further out to deeper waters in search of demersals. Again, nothing was taking our jigs.

Without further delays, we headed to deeper jigging grounds. First stop, a notorious spot called 'Hutan Melintang' as we couldn't believe that not a single fish was interested in our jigs. An infamous spot known for its wide variety of predators namely razor sharp toothed gangsters like sharks, barracudas & spanish macks that just can't help confiscating our jigs and hooks.

As usual, another surprise for a few of us, a mate got the first take and felt like it was a snag. He kept cranking and didn't budge. Another mate got another take, this time it took some drag and immediately after, I was on too! The first fish finally realised it's been hooked up and started to dart about taking drag. And all of a sudden, all 3 of us couldn't feel anything anymore and started retrieving our lines. It felt like it was all tangled up and an occasional tug here and there. We then noticed that there was a school of cobia gangsters, jigs in mouth, swimming up towards us and the boat. The school took notice and immediately scrambled, made a sharp turn parallel to the boat tangling up a few more lines as they go. 2 of us lost our fish and only the first one survived and managed to land the whopper of a cobia of about 30kgs!

On the next drop with a new jig tied on, a quick take and feisty fight ensues.

This small cobia took fancy to my Xesta Agraam jig and was no match for the Majorcraft Giant Killing rod.

After the cobia frenzy drought hit us hard for the next few hours hauling only one grouper and another tiny spanish mack. Before the sun sets, we headed off to anchor at Pulau Sembilan (P9) slowly winding down the day before night falls. A nicely semi sheltered spot famous for its big schools of giant hard tail scads. We quickly switched to our favourite ultra light jigging gear Evergreen Temujin Spider matched with a Shimano Stella 1000FE. We managed to fill up all of our ice boxes and witness the occasional spectacular queen fish aerial fights.

Full loaded Temujin Spider. This is no giant hard tail scad fight.

Feisty little queen fish put up a massive fight taking my IMA Gun 12g for a good run.

And another bigger queenie guaranteeing a good run on the ultra light tackle.

All in all, another signature appeal of Pulau Jarak's unpredictability and yet hauling quite a bit of fish (mostly hard tail scads). We'll be back to keep Pulau Jarak's reputation in check till the next time.

Photos courtesy of Tackle Source.

A curious case of humpbacks and samsons.

A few weeks earlier, while on a holiday trip to Perth, I managed to hook up with a friend of a friend's who owns a boat and he was super kind to bring us out for a quick half a day's jigging in the shallows. Weeks prior to the trip, we kept a tight watch over the seasonal change that resulted in unpredictable weather. Just few days before the trip, I was visiting down south and experienced winds in excess of 140kph, ripping trees off the ground taking down power lines and a gas station.

Fortunately, the weather calmed down a bit and 2 days prior to the day trip, wind and tide forecast indicates conditions that are OK, not ideal, to head out to the shallow reefs and drop a couple of jigs in the hopes that the samson's still there. The swells were quite pronounced up to 4-5 meters at times with winds up to 12 knots with a forecast of picking up to 15 knots later in the morning. A small window of opportunity and we took it.

With his speed boat, we were at our first spot just under 30 minutes, the sounder was quite bare with occasional schools of baits as we cruise around a bit looking for bigger blotches. We decided to drop some jigs regardless and aimed at demersals at the bottom instead.

Upon several jig drops and knocking on the bottom, we managed to hook up a couple of pesky scorpion fish and a small dhufish, not the legal size basically. It was rather difficult to snap any pix as it was very rocky and not the smartest thing to mess with a scorpion fish.

With a GoPro latched on the other side of the boat, I managed to capture some decent fights of my mate using my pimped out Shimano Stradic 6000FJ paired with a Giant Killing PE3 rod.

The best part about this short trip out? A pair of humpbacks came to check out our pimped out tackle!

Tiny Samson but BIG on fight to the end. The pimped out Stradic didn't break a sweat.

Feisty sambo was no match for the pimped out tackle.

Hook in mouth, jig slapping the cheeks, surrendered.

There was no big Sambos to be found, skipper took pity and gave us his pink snapper instead.

Another small Sambo with BIG fight all the way to the tip of my pimped out Ocea Jigger & Giant Killing Long Fall. No contest, didn't even take any drag but sure as hell worth more than its weight.

 

Short but strong fight all the way to the top.

While jigging, we heard puffs and big splashes not far from where we were jigging and we saw a pair of humpbacks swimming around us. Never would we imagine to be able to witness any whales and they were UP CLOSE! We were awestruck and gaped at the sheer size of these gentle giants and forgot about our jigging.

The humpbacks decided to come even closer to check us out, occasionally peeking out of the water with a curious stare keeping the calf at bay. The video above shows how close they were to the boat, iPhone video with no zoom and no post processing, as it is. With so many years of OZ offshore fishing, never have my mates seen any this close.

The curious whale experience alone was worth the short and unfruitful jigging trip. I'll surely be back to hunt these famous big sambos when the time is right.

Falling in love with the Long Fall + Jigger combo

The promise of an epic spanish mack haul from my recent trip to the south china sea was met with horrible weather where the trip wasn't just cut short but brought me down to my knees barfing and hanging on to dear life.

Nevertheless, I've acquired myself this sweet gear combo of a Shimano Ocea Jigger + MajorCraft Long Fall rod and was eager to get it pimped and ready for battle. So here's the low down.

Virgin reel, strapped tight and ready.

First yummy bits that goes in, new silvery bling hot off the oven from Japan. Out goes the ARC bearings and in goes Hybrid Ceramic bearings. Lubed them balls with light oil and externally rubbed down with some teflon grease for protection.

Main crank shaft and pinion gear support ARC bearings swapped out with Hybrid Ceramic bearings. Oiled balls and grease rubbed exterior.

Second crank shaft ARC bearings replaced too.

Second pinion gear support ARC bearing up next.

Spool support ARC bearing our and Hybrid Ceramic already snugly fit in the body. This is usually the spot to fiddle with when tuning free spool performance. For this instance, due to higher possibility of salt water intrusion, I opted to lightly grease the balls with salt-water "spec'ed" grease and externally rubbed down as well. Free spool speed isn't the priority as I'll be using jigs of 80g-160g and not about casting ultra light lures.

Another spool support ARC bearing but with a solid king pin in place that needs to be removed using a specialist pin remover tool. Any forcing here will definitely result in unwanted damages.

I've only managed to drop the jigs a couple of times before the weather got worse with cooler boxes propelling about on the boat like demolition balls. Not much impression to be had but I'll have to wait for my next trip back to Pulau Jarak in late August in order to be properly introduced and hopefully 'fall in love' with the sweet combo of the jigger and much hyped MajorCraft long fall rod.