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The 2007 Account
Its been close to 3 MONTHS since I last got out on the water to fish with my crew. That plus the even more unpredictable than ever NE Monsoon weather shut off January from fishing and most of February.
The last 10 days or so finally saw a change in the sea conditions that seem to have indicated a wind down of the monsoon winds and various crews restarted their piscatorial pursuits leaving me gnashing my teeth due to work commitments. The initial reports though were not that great, with crews citing big seas at night, cool water temps and dirty water conditions providing less than stellar catches. But with my crew bugging me to head out and the CNY weekend coming up, last Friday found Ishak in my workshop tying heavy duty Apollo rigs whilst I retrieved and checked the gear for the trip.
Saturday at 5pm and Ishak had topped up the fuel tanks and spares and I had just finished loading the ice whilst Kahar was putting the props on the boat. One more quick check and Ishak towed the boat to the ramp and we launched her. As usual, the port engine was a little stubborn to start and I blew the fuel system whilst Kahar held the boat at station using the starboard engine. After that both engines worked just fine..... until Kahar told me that he might have fixed the counter props the wrong way round.... which meant that putting the boat in forward gear sent us backward and vice versa... A lot of ribbing and good natured piss taking later, we brought her to the ramp edge and set about taking the props off and swapping them round whilst waiting for DaChief to arrive for his maiden trip of 2007.
DaChief duly arrived and we loaded his heavy gear on to the boat along with his "Lucky" Tiagra 30. Heading out, Ishak took us on a NNW bearing into a NE sea that was a lot rougher than it looked like from the shore. With the waves building slightly in the freshening breeze, we had to plough our way through a nasty 4-5ft quartering head sea to a spot some 68km offshore, with the target being big red snapper and possibly MJs. Roughly 1.5 hours later, we arrived somewhat battered, pretty damp, but ready to fish.
The first 2 spots we tried yielded a few decent snapper of the table sized variety and one or two bigger ones too, but Ishak decided to move on. We anchored up at a third spot and I rigged to fish as DaChief settled down to battle a horrible case of "Chunder Fever". That spot worked out pretty well as we had a quadruple hookup on the first drop of baited rigs, which duly yielded about a dozen or so snapper in the 2kg+ range and a few decent kerisi bali too. But all too soon, the bite seemed to die down, by then we had at least caught enough fish to make the trip seem worthwhile. Ishak then decided to shift even further offshore to a spot 7km away, so we pounded it out for another 12 minutes and spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out the right spot, but after consulting 3 handheld GPS units and the console mounted one, we anchored up on the lip of a depression in the seabed that had one or two nice little marks on the sounder.
I was the first to drop a rig down and shortly found my Apollo rig nicely hit by a double batch of red snapper... this continued for about 2 hours until midnight when the current picked up and the bite died down, but by then I had landed over a dozen decent snapper, the biggest only around 3-4kgs, so nothing much to brag about there... nothing had taken drag off my reel yet, so I decided to take a quick nap.
At about 2am, I cracked open an eye to watch Mahadi our new crew member fish away and shortly boat a nice snapper, followed by kahar who had a very nice one-two punch of a snapper and red emperor at the same time on his Apollo ranggong, so I sent down my Apollo rig and sure enough, I added another 3 snapper to the score before the current picked up again, so I took another nap.
At 4am, I awoke to the sound of a nice fish thumping on the deck and watched as Mahadi deftly despatched a thumper 7kg kerisi bali into the coldbox... Seeing the nice fish, I switched my Apollo for a heavy leadered ranggong rig and sent down my favoured big fish bait of a butterflied whole rumahan on a twin hook rig.
The bait hit bottom and I cranked it up just a crank and a half as I was using a shorter leader. As I chatted to Mahadi about his nice fish, I mentioned that I had caught my biggest MJ at this spot at about 4.30am a year ago and I was hoping for a huge kerisi bali or MJ again this time round.... The words had barely left my lips when I felt a huge hit on my rod and frantically cranked 3 times before striking. I knew immediately that it was a good fish and I watched my Calstar 755H Psycho Lite bend nicely before the drags on my 665 started hissing their song. Four times the fish wrenched its head back down towards the bottom and at that point I wasn't 100% sure what it was... its head shakes were not as frantic as a kerisi bali and I thought it might be a grouper, but big MJs and kerisi bali have a similar signature hit and head shake.
2 minutes later though, as I man handled the fish with short strokes, I started thinking it must be a grouper as it was really heavy but seemed to have given up about a 100ft off the bottom (water was 350ft deep). I was suprised when the fish made a last minute attempt to run as the ranggong approached, but I managed to control it and get the leader in hand...
Up popped a familiar barrel shape and woohoooooo!!! finally a decent fish to open the account.... a nice big fat grouper... I towed the fish to the side of the boat and sank the gaff in the corner of its mouth before I dragged it on board. Ishak deigned to crack an eye open and swiftly made the decision to rig up and fish, so I settled back to watch his rig as we chatted for about half an hour before he got a hit, but it turned out to be a small hammerhead shark that I cut off at boat side.
With that, I decided to go back to sleep having boated the biggest fish so far... At 7am I was roused and we made plans to head off to the west to fish a few more spots... Our efforts so far had just about filled 2/3 of the big coldbox with snapper and I had yet to put my big mama fish in there, so the crew started redistributing the fish between the coldboxes so that the ice woud be properly layered and big mama would get in the big box.
Just before we left the spot, Ishak repositioned for one final drift and after I sent down my Apollo rig, I got a nice 2kg red emperor to add to the account.
We spent the rest of Sunday morning motoring around and drifting the deep water reefs, which yielded a few more nice snapper and kerisi bali along with a bunch of highly prized bream of which I accounted for over half a dozen.
The trip meter was at 262km by the time we made it back to the ramp, so I guess we had certainly worked the water. Not a bad opener for the new season... the next trip will see the jig gear getting a workout.
Pics below, sorry there aren't many.
Regards,
Saimee
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Tight Lines
Dan McGatha
Originally Posted by stickbom! 
Re: The 2007 Account
