Another Great surface action week in Kirinda

 

I had returning clients Claude and David Beaufils along with Jean Pierre and their friend Frank coming to fish with us in Sri Lanka, Claude had been fishing in Sri Lanka about 4 years ago with good results and when he met me in Port Blair 2 years ago he told me about Sri Lanka and that if we ever decided to organize charters in Sri Lanka he would be game to fish with us again. To cut a long story short Claude, David and Jean Pierre were back to fish with us in a new destination, this is an achievement for us to have have returning clients in different destinations and I would like to congratulate our crews for their professionalism that makes this possible.

First up on day 1 after explaining to them that the fish are not here in quantity but quality, David gets a nice fish in the 30 kg range to start his trip, I must comment here that again Sri Lanka is a more technical destination and you can have great results, however for beginners or first timers big GT can be a bit of a challenge…. This is a heavy tackle ZONE!!!! Amigos. Period.

And then follows things up with a nice leaping Cobia on Popper.

More nice fish are landed, we had a lot of line bursts as well on the first 2 days, one rod had a cracked guide and the a Shimano Stella had a worn line roller, not particularly useful when chasing big GT’s.

 

We found some spots that had a lot of GT’s of the smaller variety, with big fish coming up on the lures in-between, there were average sized GT’s as well like the one pictured above. Lots of tackle testing line bursts as well.

Would you believe this nice Golden trevally on popper as well!!

Jean Pierre was fishing light lures and finally managed a mid size one on his lighter gear.

Check out this jet black GT, good size too for a black GT, David is all smiles after it pulled hard!!!!

The above size fish is the regular each day with one or two really big fish coming up, we had more bust offs in shallow water, again today.

We thought this huge Spanish mackerel was a dogtooth the way it smacked the lure and took off, one look at the size of it and you will know that this is one Spaniard and a half!!!

 

Another view to give you an idea of the size of this fish. MONSTER

More nice GT’s for David, he was with the right gear and had the dedication to keep going for big results.

Claude too get into the act after he this 25kg GT was caught on a light setup and took nearly 25 minutes to land

Another huge Spanish although a bit smaller than the first one again came up and smashed the popper.

Claude with a nice GT caught on the Racepoint 200 which he had to switch too as he has a cracked line guide on his other rod.

Franck posed with a normal sized GT when the bite is on we are getting a good number of bites from fish like this each day.

David again end the trip very nicely with another great GT, so all in all a great trip for returning clients to one of destinations.

More news coming soon as we are having really good fishing while the weather lasts before the start of the SW monsoon, but then we are moving East so the reports will follow.

Tight lines.

Fishing hard for BIG fish in Kirinda

 

Upto the middle of March the wind was blowing here in the deep South of Lanka and we were concerned when Guillaume and co arrived if the weather would hold up or not, we had a frank discussion with group and advised them that as usual we would do our best but given the prevailing conditions if they persisted fishing would be hard. The forecast showed good weather for the last few days of the trip, but now a days we hardly get accurate forecasts that last beyond 2 days.

Day one saw us out jigging as the seas we still too choppy for the poppers to work and as we had some jigging machine anglers with us on the group who were prepared to jig hard and fast all day they had some great doggy hits the first day of which one resulted in this nice doggy landed the others either dropped the hooks or busted off.

The next day the conditions started to clear out and we made a run to some of our farther fishing spots that now became accessible, immediate hook ups with big fish resulted, the first day we lost 3 big fish including one real monster, but landed some nice ones as above.

Days 3 & 4 and with conditions stabilizing, we started to have continuous action on lures both on surface and on jig, small fish interspersed with big fish, exciting fishing you do not know when the big mama is going to up and nail the lure big time.

Above and below are the types of fish we now start hitting regularly, quality solid fish with big girths and tremendous fight. On day 4 we have fish that breaks off 200 lb leader after a 6 minute fight, the angler is really disappointed as he knows he has probably lost the fish of a lifetime… but thats fishing and why we keep coming back.

Guillaume below with a really nice fish again taken on day 5 you can see that the conditions and water are perfect for hard fishing and chasing big GT, this day also produced an incredible evening session on popper with a huge number of fish boated both small and medium.

More nice sized GT’s follow

And more…

Bluefin below were out in voracious little packs hunting in 3 and 4’s with one finally nailing the big lure or getting snagged.

The sound that is so welcome to the GT angler the big explosion, like that grenade going off below the water and the fight is on, we get on a super bus GT, one that has eluded us for a while now, some have been missed, some bust off, some hooks pulled but now once it is on board there is nothing like a monster GT for sheer tough guy looks and personality!!!

The jigging action continues, with continuous hook ups

Multiple hook-ups

GT’s barging their way in on jig as well

and medium sized fish being the most common

Stay tuned for more news from the island as we know there is more to come.

Tight lines.