ANGLER NEST GROUP

After the great fishing trips we had at the start of the season and the sudden heart breaking loss of our skipper Kantha, it has been a difficult few weeks for the team at GFA. We as a team have held together and support each other as we move forward into the new year. The last group of the decade and the first of the new decade was from Japan and led by Nakamura San from anglers Nest, we had returning anglers Masao San, Otashiro San, Ryota Nakamura San and first visit to the Andaman Islands for Yamada San, Kaori and Yoshimura.

This season for the first time in 5 years we are having a regular monsoon and this meant that we still have an active north east which unfortunately means easterly winds at this time of the year giving us a very wet ride out to the fishing spots and choppy conditions to fish in. The trip was going to be hard work for all as the weather forecast did not show any sign of letting up for the duration of the trip.

As we know Japanese anglers are the stick bait maestros to be able to raise fish in these conditions would be a tough ask, but raise fish they did and even though we did not get as many GTs and in the sizes we would normally like we still managed to get PB’s for two anglers Nakamura who managed to land a 20 kilo on popper and a 30 kilo GT his PB till date on stick bait on the last day of the trip.

Asada Kaori who was the only lady angler on the trip fished with great resolve in the challenging conditions, she first managed to get a small dogtooth on topwater and on the last day of the trip which was her birthday as well in really rough conditions she managed to hook and land her PB a 30 kilo GT which was a great birthday gift for her.

Otashiro San who is a veteran stickbait master, he makes his own stickbaits for the trips each specially crafted for the rod line combo as well as the hooks he chooses to balance them perfectly did once again land the biggest GT of the trip at 30 plus kilos.

Otashiro San who is a veteran stickbait master, he makes his own stickbaits for the trips each specially crafted for the rod line combo as well as the hooks he chooses to balance them perfectly did once again land the biggest GT of the trip at 30 plus kilos.

Masao San was unlucky this time when his knot parted on a big strike he had from a GT but that’s fishing and the whole team gave it their best effort as usual.

Other notable species that we landed were a super sized Bluefin trevally that was 10 kilos, when we had multiple hooks up with them as a whole school came upto the boat and an estimated 50 kilo plus grey reef shark on topwater that as usual provided a most dogged fight till the end.

On the last evening to celebrate Kaori San personal best GT and her birthday the group had some of our famous Andaman Mud crab curry and we had a surprise Birthday cake to make the day extra special for Kaori San.

Till our next trip report

Tight Lines!