JOURNEY OF A FISHERMAN GROUP
June 21-26 we hosted Tony Orton and his Journey of a Fisherman crew all the way from New Zealand of Hayden, Peter and Mike for the week.
We’d had a tropical system come through the week before and it seemed to have stirred up the water pretty good, the best we could find was a clean green about 50nm offshore. Our structure here in close it was not so clean green but we managed to raise 10 sailfish their first day out releasing 4 out of 8 bites. Getting used to the circle hooks and the all important ‘drop back’.
Went wide 2nd day out hunting for better activity, a bit tough raising 3 sailfish and releasing 2 from 3 bites as well as a hot blue marlin that didn’t switch to the pitch bait.
Day 3 we had Peter onboard solo trying on the fly rod with the others spending a day in the Spanish Colonial City of Antigua. We found some good activity raising 10 sailfish and Peter did great releasing 3 from 4 on the fly rod and 2 from 4 on the conventional.
The next few days we went wide again, found a good current line holding some sailfish and mahi mahi and then located spinner porpoise on the radar and had some pretty epic tuna fishing….
Hayden was first on the board with a healthy mahi and a solid 145lb yellowfin. Mike got into a couple…
Tony testing out the new generation Shimano Stella 20000
Near the end of the day while reeling in a small tuna caught on the troll Peter cast out a popper we had rigged on our old first generation Stella 20000 rigged with 80lb spectra tied to 90lb fluorocarbon leader and it got smashed with an epic top water bite right next to the boat. What a bite and what a fight, Peter really put the heat on this fish putting the gear to its max and we had the gaffs in a little under an hour. Congrats on the fish of a lifetime on topwater…a 232lb yellowfin.
They ended up with 8 yellowfin overall for the trip, several mahi with a couple of nice ones and we raised 35 sailfish and a blue marlin releasing 17 from 29 bites.
A bit on the tough side by our standards though we still had some good fishing days. The tropical season has been more active than we can remember it being for years but it will settle down and the water and fishing will get back to how we remember past summers being, epic! We have had a July trip postpone to August so we do have some days open between July 15th and 23rd and again July 31st through to August 1-2-3.
We’ve installed the new Furuno NavNet TZ3 coupled with a 25KW scanner that can pick up the birds/spinner schools with ease to help find the tuna and billfish, it has already paid off!
Don’t forget the upcoming season, we’ll be out of the water for September but back and available from October on, the early season is normally solid with good fishing through December and then the season gets into gear January onwards. Contact us and secure your trip, the Lodge can accommodate 2o pax and we have some great boats available this season so can no problem for the bigger groups.
info@sailfishoasis.com
