HAMAD & COMPANY RETURN

For this fishing week, we had our Kuwaiti friend Hamad come in with his buddies Salim, Khaled, Jassem and Ahmad. Hamad was on his 6th trip with us and has been after a dogtooth tuna on topwater for the longest time. It was good to catch up with the guys once they were in and had a chance to relax a bit. As usual, this group of anglers had an awesome array of lures for the trip. A few of our Japanese anglers mentioned that some of these lures were not available even in Japan – a county that caters to the numerous angling enthusiasts.

With the winds set to die down over the week, we made a plan that would allow us to fish the best spots when the conditions would be most suitable. The plan worked for us this week, with all the anglers getting multiple fish and chances with big fish as well. Salim was fishing for the first time for GT’s having landed big Yellowfin tuna in Oman, was the star of the week. He landed multiple fish in the 30-40 kilo range as you can see from the pictures in the report.

On the last drift of the second day’s fishing, both Ahmad and Jassem had a double strike which turned out to be a 30 kilo GT and a 25 kilo dogtooth tuna – not bad at all for a first dogtooth on topwater. Fishing deeper spots, we landed quite a few GT’s in the 15-25 kilo range as well. What we noticed was the fish coming up from the deep and tail biting the lures.

On the last cast of the day, with Hamad’s leader into the guides of his rod, a huge dogtooth came up and nailed the Carpenter Gamma. The fish decided it was not having any of this and decided to take off, leaving Hamad helplessly holding on for dear life with the heavy drag. It all happened so fast that there was hardly time to react before 50 meters of line had gone, and the fish busted it off on the coral reef below. Sadly, the dogtooth tuna will yet again remain on the wish-list, and another trip.

The light jigging action was insane when we did take some time off the popping. There were lots of bigger doggies between the midsized ones. To be honest, we landed very few and exploded a light jigging rod on an obviously much larger specimen. We even caught a juvenile yellowfin tuna on the mark, which surely must have lost its way.

One of the things we noticed was, the fish had a lot of condition and were heavy for the fork length, with 120 cm long fish pushing the 35 kilo mark. Also, unlike what happens normally, the fish were going straight back to the reef. If the anglers do not manage to put on enough pressure to turn the head in time, it was game over. Both Hamad and Salim realized this as the big Andaman GT’s made off with Hammer Heads, Carpenters and even Amegari’s with PE10 lines.

This time around we also had Spanish Mackerel, and in very good sizes. These fish are known to come flying out of the water with your lure and will most times bite you off or throw the hook. We hooked several, including some estimated at 25-30 kilos but landed none.

Till our next trip report enjoy the pictures

Tight Lines!