Why go fishing with a good charter operator/ guide

 

When you go out on that big fishing trip to that exotic location you have read so much about, drooled over the pictures and reports and imagined yourself holding that trophy fish and coming home with a memory to cherish forever…… have you considered who you will be fishing with or the company you are going to book this trip of a lifetime with?

Once you have decided on the location for your fishing trip and selected the operator who will host and guide your angling holiday a good operator and guide can give you a wealth of information on how you should prepare for the trip and the target species you want to catch. This will range from the time of the year and season to the tackle set up and lure selection. Yes you may have read about what other people have used and forums give you good advice but the ones out in the zone will know exactly what is what i.e the guides you will be fishing with and the charter operator.
So get in touch with them and establish a one on one so they know in advance your expectations, experience and capability, you will also be able to judge how responsive and prompt they are in attending to your needs and more importantly what will be possible and what not.

If you are going to go out on a holiday with a new operator do ask for some references of pervious clients, a good guide and operator will always be honest with their clients.

An important aspect of going on a fishing trip is going to be the weather conditions, today with changing weather patterns it is hard and difficult to predict the conditions accurately, guides and operators have no control of this but they can keep you informed of adverse weather conditions being expected and most often give you the chance to reschedule a trip to a later date.

A good guide will not only advise you on the tackle you need to carry with you, he/she will also help you to set up your gear, select your lures to match the bait the target fish are feeding on and ensure you are not carrying the things you will not need.

Expect a good guide to give you a briefing on what the tide and current will be doing while you fish for the day, and what species to target and when. Discuss this openly and come up with a plan that you are comfortable with.

Good guides and operators have a lot of fishing experience behind them they do this for a living and would probably have seen more fish caught than most of their clients, a good guide is going spend 8 hours a day on the boat with you for a week he/she can give you a lot of pointers and guidance on Casting Techniques and the best way to work your lures and also advise you as to which lures or colours will work the  best in given conditions.

Ask questions and observe, a good guide can make you a better angler and teach you how to read the water, to look for signs of fish and feeding and also how to position the boat both to fish the area effectively based on the structure around and to give you the best opportunity to hook, fight and land your fish of dreams.

A good fishing guide can also suggest alternatives that may result in landing that dream fish so be open and flexible if you can.

After all, the charter and guide’s income is determined by how successfully a customer can be put onto fish, after that it is up to you as the angler to do your bit as well to make sure that fish is landed, photographed and released to fight another day.

Comments are welcome to this post.

Directors note for the month of September

With the tropical fishing season getting ready to start in the south of Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands, it has been a busy month for the team. With lots of preparation and novel ideas that we have introduced to keep us fishing more while making the option to fish with us a winning situation for our customers.

The beginning of August saw us fishing out on the East coast of Sri Lanka where we had exceptional fishing, arm wrenching action, we managed to land numerous cracking GT’s along with some great shore fishing for a variety of species, we are looking forward to the season opener in Krinda which we are sure is home to some of the biggest GT’s around. More details in this months newsletter.

The new 31 ft Centre Console “Rampageous” has arrived in Sri Lanka and will be ready to roll out as soon as she is registered, she is custom designed to fish very comfortably and has the horsepower to get to all the remote spots in a hurry. Watch out for the blog post showing first pictures.

As a special thank you to all our returning customers Team GFA has introduced our Customer Loyalty program which offers discounts, free days and lucky draws, this program is open to existing and new clients, so just click Here to sign up and introduce your fishing mates for more benefits.

Both boats Halcyon 3 and Rampage in the Andaman Islands are out for complete servicing, fresh anti-foul coatings and engine maintenance, allowing us to run and fully test the boats before the first customers arrive to start another exceptional season.

To encourage saltwater fishing and increase awareness locally for the sustainable management of game species we are also running limited fixed day departure trips for a short time so that keen anglers have the opportunity to fish some of the world’s best fisheries.

Readers of our blogs can also register and post their views and comments to our blog posts now.

Finally for our international clientele we are happy to announce that we are the proud sponsors and have our own section on the World’s premier fishing forum gtpopping.com also we are participating on the French fishing forum http://www.exo-thonic.com/

Till next month,

Tight lines

Light Tackle Shore fishing

As part of our trip this time we decided to also have a go at the shore fishing options in the area and see what they were like, Damith has a good idea of were to fish and has fished from the shores of Sri Lanka extensively for many years so he has some great information of areas, how to get there and what local conditions are optimal to fish lures.

Off we go down a secret pathway to have go, sometimes it feels good when you dont have the heavy stuff on hand and the body is aching from casting all day long and jigging. Damith has borrowed some Spanyids from me, he says they dont look good but he will try them out anyways!!

The entrance to the river mouth on one side, it was quite windy this day in a quite spectacular location that had some perfect ambush points as the outflow curved around a bend

Here is the team trying a small reefy channel during morning’s session

Damith gets going with a raider and has almost instant success with a small big eye trevally

Then soon after the fun started, we start to get hits from all kinds of species, the most active are the big eye herrings and these light up the action with spectacular jumps the moment they feel the hook.

Here are some pictures of some taking off the moment they are hooked

The action keeps going on

The man and his raider with a big eye herring

Here we are setting up at the river mouth getting ready for an evening session of casting, wonder what live- bait would be like

The perfect ambush point, waiting for time and tide or just relaxing a bit in beautiful surroundings

Trying our luck

Pint sized GT one on many…..

Wait for them to swim out the deeper water on the reefs edge, are there bigger ones about well lets mention a fiesty magrove jack that went grabbed lure and went around a rock… what happened next he was bullied out from his hiding place and came straight up to the shore followed by a GT in the 12 kg region, imagine if it had taken the lure instead of the Mangrove Jack

Hookup with an oxeye herring, which seem to be the most abundant species.

Damith poses with a small finger-mark snapper

Aksahy lands a small barracuda while Damith hooks up in the background again

Air borne fish in the shallows… again

Here are the species we have caught

• Mangrove Jack
• Threadfin Salmon
• Grouper
• GT
• Golden Trevally
• Barracuda
• Snapper more than 1 species
• Barramundi

Tight lines

Handling GT’s for maximum survival after release

 

Gamefishing Asia is committed to conserving our fisheries to the maximum extent possible and Caranx Ignoblis is top on our priority list. As a top sport fish, bad boy of the reef and fear nothing fish, the Giant Trevally has it all, its is also the fish we at Gamefishing Asia are lucky enough to catch the most!!!

Over the years we have honed our techniques to handle and release the fish and are happy to share some methods which we hope will reach as many people as possible as a guide to letting tough guy (i.e Mr GT) swim away and come back later bigger, heavier and tougher.

Use the Largest Barbless Treble Hooks appropriate to the lure

Given the GT’s vice like jaw structure and how hard they hit a lure, in our opinion it does not matter if the hook has barbs or not for a good hook up, however big trebles are better in that if a fish is hooked in a fleshy area or on the body they will not rip the fish apart like smaller thinner gauge trebles, they are easier to take out of the fishes mouth even if the GT has swallowed that huge lure whole (yes they do!!), barbless hooks do not get snagged in the landing net and if you are using the lure as a grab tool to get the fish on board are not as big a danger to the deckies hands as hooks with barbs.

Most of all using barbless hooks means you are not as big a danger to others around you especially when you let off that quick cast in sight of boil of fusilier and have forgotten to open the bail arm.

Scale your tackle to terrain you are fishing

Speak to your guide and charter operator before you go on that trip of a lifetime or get information from other people who have fished the area before, go with what your guides tell you. Yes it is possible to land big GT’s on lighter equipment but there is also the chance of you being cut off in shallow terrain and leaving that big GT to die an agonising death with lure stuck in the throat, sure not all the Trevally make it to fight another day but let us make sure we have at least tried our best. Also t is our opinion that the quicker you can land a fish the easier it is to revive and set free.

Landing and bringing the fish on board

This is a slightly larger topic so we will break it up a bit into a few sections

Tools: Here you would need good quality thick gloves to grab the leader, lure and if necessary the GT’s tail which has sharp flukes that can rip unprotected hands, a large lading net is a valuable tool to have on board, a good quality disgorger or long nosed plier to remove the hook, have everything ready before hand. If using a landing net just guide the GT into the landing net do not ever try to scoop the GT into the net this is a recipe for disaster, we like this method because once the GT is in the net it is not going anywhere, by bumping the boat into gear and facing the fish towards the bow you are also reviving it and making the release of the fish easier, the angler has time to grab a sip of water, get the cameras ready and set up, so your trophy spends the least time out of the water. If you are using your hands grab the lure with one hand and the wrist of the tail with the other and then bring the fish into the boat, never lift a big GT in by the head alone you can damage it, also never use the leader to lift the fish in, a break off will leave you red faced and the angler upset over the loss of an expensive lure. If you have 2 people available it is easier to lift a big Geet onboard.

On Deck handling

GT’s expend so much energy on the fight that by the time they come on the deck they do not have too much energy left to flap around, however good practice requires that the landing area be clear of any obstructions or obstacles.

The Boat deck is a hot so if you are going to put a GT down on the deck  make sure you throw a bucket of water on the deck first, or use a wet towel as a landing mat for the fish.

If your GT has to be photographed then you need to have everything ready before hand the less time out of the water the better for the fish, your first priority is to get the hook out and get some water through the GT’s gills.

Use of hook disgorger to push the hooks out is a fast and effective way to de hook a fish, you can also get to the difficult to access places if the lure is taken in deep The T-bar de hooker from leadertec we have found works very well

Remember you need to have the fish out of water for the least time, if your charter boat is fitted with a raw water wash-down hose it doubles as a way to pass oxygenated water though the GT’s gills.

If you do not have a raw water wash-down on the boat make sure there is a bucket but remember to turn the fish every now and again so that both sides of gills have water  passing through.

Also if struggling with a badly hooked fish where the hooks are difficult to get out stop focussing on getting the hooks out and remember to aerate the gills regularly to enhance the chance of survival.

Release

This is the most important part, after the euphoria of taking pictures of your prize GT its just terrible if when you drop it back into the water it just comes to the surface and cant get down to safety. Its important to try to get the fish back in the water soonest so with GT’s if you have been giving them lots of water while taking your photographs a simple head first release into the water suffices in most cases. Being like a dive the rush of water through the gills revives the fish. GT’s caught on jig and big GT’s may need more time to be revived again holding them vertical in the landing net and motoring ahead in gear with the fish facing forwards revives them quickly in most cases and is safer than going for a swim in shark infested waters or where there is strong current to try and get

the GT revived and strong enough to swim away on its own. Sometimes you may need to sacrifice on the pictures for the sake of getting the GT back into the water quickly one of the things to note is if the colour of the fish changes and it starts to loose colour, take time here to revive it in the water and it will tell you its ready for release when you start to see signs of movement and the colour come back to the fish. A final request to follow the simple advice above as an angler and try to release as many of these apex predators as you can. Always.