Bite Me has a group of four anglers from Australia on board and is trolling a variety of lures and baits looking for a pack of wahoo.
A big Yo-Zuri Bonita on the short corner, a Lurestreet Classic Redhead on the long corner, A Pakula Cockroach on the short rigger and rigged garfish skipbait on 3 feet of 7x7 SS wire on the long rigger. This is a good spread to find wahoo as well as pick up the odd Spanish mackerel or yellowfin tuna.
Skipper spots some birds hovering about 500 yards off the reef and decides to head out to check out what's going on. Looks like tuna. The anglers put out a 5th rod down the middle flat-lining a small tuna bullet.
As soon as Bite Me reaches the spot, four rods load up and everybody gets real busy real quick. Couple of minutes later we have a skipjack, a small yellowfin, a large rainbow runner and a small wahoo on the deck. Lures are going out again fast. Interesting though...not normal to get such a mix in exactly the same spot....
All goes quiet for a few minutes and then suddenly the skipbait on the long rigger disappears and the Penn International 30lb outfit loads up and starts to howl. Hmmm, almost forgot we had that skipait out there in all the mayhem, nice big yellowfin maybe ?
A few seconds later with the angler at the transom, rod in hand and taking the strain, a blue marlin of about 250lbs roars out of the water and charges towards the boat. Skipper guns the boat as the blue blasts across the surface on a typical blue marlin furious charge.
All eyes are on the blue as the line which is almost tight to the fish suddenly parts and whiplashes up and back at the transom. The blue is gone.
The double comes back but no snap swivel at the end. Just a slight kinks in the line where the snap was tied on.
What Went Wrong
We left a wahoo skipbait out, rigged on a short piece of wire clipped directly to the double and headed out to a bait ball in 400m of water. Skipper was thinking yellowfin or stray wahoo but there was a chance that we might get hit by a marlin and the small wire wahoo rig had little hope of surviving. The blue's bill was longer than the wire rig so inevitably, with no heavy mono leader, the snap swivel / Double knot came into contact with the marlin's rough bill and bye-bye marlin.
In My Humble Opinion
Its a catch 22 situation. Wind-on mono leaders are suicide in wahoo pack country. They absolutely always get bitten off. That short length of dacron flying through the water is as good as any lure and is always hit by wahoo. The colour coded ones are the worst of the lot. The dacron splice is just about the right distance away from a hooked up wahoo to tempt another strike from the pack. You can tie or crimp a mono leader to the wire wahoo rig but inevitably, it is another connection through a solid ring or swivel that is just asking to be hit by a wahoo. Using blackened fittings helps but it is mostly the bubble trail created by fittings rather than the fitting itself that draws the strike.
Clipping the wire wahoo rig dirctly to the snap swivel on the double puts any bubble trails close in to the hooked up wahoo during the fight. Its how we minimize bite-offs, but be prepared to wave bye-bye to the occasional blue marlin !
Its horses for courses and swings both ways. If you are fishing short wire rigs for wahoo and a blue jumps on, you are in about as much trouble as if you were fishing mono leaders for blues and a wahoo jumps on.
When you are fishing out here, there is no such thing as a perfect all-round rig.
Adrian was born on the island of Cyprus and graduated to his first rod & reel at the age of five. Having fished around the world from the Arabian Gulf to the North sea and English Channel, he finally settled for the tropical waters of the South Pacific around the island of Kadavu, Fiji Islands. Director of Matava Resort Gamefishing, he skippers 'Bite Me', the resort's 31ft DeepVee Gamefishing vessel and thoroughly enjoys exploring the light and heavy tackle fishing around the island and Great Astrolabe Barrier Reef. An IGFA Certified Captain, he advocates tag & release and is a keen supporter of the IGFA and the Billfish Foundation.
Adrian Watt
IGFA Captain
http://www.GamefishingFiji.com
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