Fishing Day 5

Location

Today we began from our sheltered location of the nort western tip of the mainland and headed west to the fishing grounds. We ended the day heading back to Nosey Mitsio which is about halfway between Nosey Be and our main location for the week.

Catches

Popping

Garry caught a GT on the Popper. I had two GT hookups but they both shed the hook after several minutes.

An early GT for Garry

Bait Fishing

I caught a Captain Fish whilst bait fishing. However, this looked nothing like the Captain Fish that Kevin caught previously.

Captain Fish

Headshot of Captain Fish

Trolling

Up to now, today had not been a good day for Kevin. However, he was delighted to catch a Wahoo. I got some underwater footage as he brought the fish to the boat.

Underwater Wahoo footage

A Wahoo saves the day

Kevin then caught a Saw-Saw (or something like that) and both Kevin and I had Barracuda whilst trolling.

Spinning

Wow-just wow! This is how I describe the sight of the carnage of a large flock of sea birds attacking a shoal of bait-fish from above while a large shoal of Bonito (small Tuna) attack the bait-fish from below. This really was a spectacle. I tried to get a photo and some video but these do not do it justice.


Carnage

Carnage as it happens

We came across several of these feeding frenzies today and some of them were three or four times larger than they appear on the above photo. We cast our bass wedges into them time and time again but the Bonito were clearly intent on catching live fish. However, we did manage a few hookups (often when casting short of the main carnage). For me this resulted in three Bonito. We were able to fish longer today and continued until the light started to fail.

Whilst we did not catch many, I found this quite exhilerating. We would spot a feeding frenzy then speed off to catch up to them before having several rapid casts before they moved on again. I was surprised just how fast these shoals move on and we had to re-locate several times.

More Kit Abuse

Garry loaned one of his Popping rods to Kevin to make up for the one that the Skipper broke. However, the skipper struck again by completely smashing this rod whilst playing a fish. In my opinion, this was caused by the crew's propensity for tightening the drag right down on the reel rather then using the "balanced tackle" approach that we all learn early on and allows us to land seemingly impossibly large fish on light tackle by allowing the rod to take some of the strain and the reel to give line via the "drag" when the fish lunges.

Yet again, no apology.

Stormy Weather

We had quite a long ride back to Nosey Mitsio. This would halve the final journey back to Nosey Be on the following day. As we travelled in darkness we could see lightening in the distance. As we got closer, the lightening continued in the same area allowing me to capture it on video,. Again, doesn't do it justice. Travelling on a small boat in open ocean as a storm builds is quite an experience.

Party Night

We had another period of rainfall once we got back to the Catamaran. However this cleared quite quickly. It turns out that this was the crew's last trip for the season so they were all heading home after several months at sea. They were delighted when they asked if we wanted three beers and we said nine - one for each crew member. This continued into the early hours (4:30 for some of us) - not wise when we were having breakfast at 6am. We drank, we sang, we danced. It was a great night.