Fishing in Vanuatu |
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I moved to Vanuatu knowing the fishing was really good there.
Several years on, I am happy to report that the fishing is not just good, but great – and getting better!
I attribute most of the improvement in fishing to changes in fishing techniques. Methods of fishing that have proved successful in other parts of the world are only now starting to make their way onto the Vanuatu fishing scene. With these changes we are finding that there are a lot more quality fish around than previously believed.
We always knew that the blue marlin, yellowfin and dogtooth tuna fishing was world-class, but I think we are just beginning to find out that the wahoo and sailfish fishing is also potentially in the same league.
For the Kiwi readers taking this in, while you may not have some of the species available that we cover here, the principle of being prepared to change your mode of attack applies equally as well in your waters as ours.
High-speed trolling
A few months ago we decided to try and figure out just how good the wahoo fishing is around Port Vila. A quick web search on wahoo fishing techniques came up with articles suggesting that ‘high-speed trolling’ was worth a trial, as wahoo regularly feed on flying fish at speeds of 20-plus knots. So we purchased a high-speed trolling system (lures by BigBite Offshore).
Even so, our expectations were low, since we were trolling at twice our regular trolling speed. It just didn’t seem natural...
Well, surprise, surprise, it didn’t take long to find out that the articles were right: faster is far better for wahoo fishing!
We used the system for 20 hours of trolling, and caught 14 wahoo and two sailfish during an otherwise very slow period of fishing (as far as we know, there weren’t any fish caught on all other boats combined during this same period).
The only major downside initially seemed to be the extra cost of fuel incurred by trolling at 15-plus knots versus seven knots, but, in fact, by utilising the high-speed trolling system, our GPS and sounder, we ended up dramatically increasing our catch rate of wahoo in comparison to how much we spent on fuel.
Initially we covered a lot of ground trolling at speeds up to 20 knots, and this resulted in us establishing five areas in which we now know nice-sized (10-30kg) wahoo reside, and which can be fished on a half-day charter from Port Vila. Indeed, two of these areas are in the harbour, and can be fished comfortably even when there are huge seas just offshore.
All these areas produce wahoo well over 50% of the time, whereas wahoo strikes outside of them are rare in comparison. Now, having identified these key holding areas, we troll these spots at normal speed (7-8 knots) with confidence, thereby reducing our fuel costs and enabling us to fish with lighter tackle.
A bonus of high-speed trolling is that we never have to take lines out of the water when running to or from the fishing grounds, and we have caught many quality fish in unlikely places that would otherwise have been passed by, as a result. Consequently, we now put lines in the water as soon as possible after leaving the dock, and we have caught several large wahoo within 10 minutes of starting or ending a charter.
Stick-baits and deep-diving minnows
Our success with the use of unconventional lures and rigging didn’t end with the use of the high-speed trolling system. Recently we began incorporating deep-diving minnows and large stick baits into our trolling spread.
As a result, our typical trolling pattern now consists of traditional lures on the short-flat and outrigger positions, with a deep-diving minnow in the long-flat position and a stick-bait way out the back. The results have been nothing short of incredible; we catch at least 25% more fish when trolling with a stick-bait out in the shotgun position, 100-150 metres behind the boat. Marlin, sailfish, mahimahi, wahoo and yellowfin love the erratic zigzagging action of these shallow-swimming lures. When we have a six-lure spread behind the boat, we know that the stick-bait will usually get nailed first, and the most often.
For pelagic species other than billfish, the deep-diver gets hit with the second greatest frequency, provided it is positioned far enough back to let it reach maximum depth.
We can’t say for certain, but we also believe that more billfish are raised to the outrigger lures or shotgun stick-bait when a deep diving minnow is in the spread. Possibly it acts as a teaser.
We picked up some invaluable information on the rigging of stick-baits and deep-diving minnows from the Nomad Sportfishing website. They have some great rigging videos available. First and foremost, never fish with the treble hooks that come standard on deep-diving minnows; they simply do not work very effectively.
The future is bright
At present, a typical full-day charter starts and ends with us fishing just inside the harbour entrances of Port Vila (two of our key wahoo-holding areas) for approximately 10-15 minutes. It would be very rare for us not to pick up a nice wahoo or two in that time frame. Then we venture offshore to hopefully raise a marlin.
There have been great numbers of marlin around lately (some very large, as we found out last week, when we got spooled on 37kg), so the odds are in our favour. And, of course, we also often pick up strikes from other pelagic species in the process. Overall, we are averaging over one strike per hour, which keeps everyone very happy. But, we believe, it can be much better.
Around the world, unconventional techniques (for Vanuatu at least) are yielding some amazing results. It is simply a matter of having the time and money to trial and tweak these methods. Over the next year, we plan to use dredges with multiple spreader arms rigged with over a 100 real, fake or hologram fish to increase our catch of billfish. We will also use kites for live-baiting, as they do in South Florida. And we plan to trial night jigging and popping by the FADs, as they do in the Gulf of Mexico at oil platforms for large yellowfin tuna, too.
If, as expected, some of these unconventional methods yield similar exceptional results to those achieved by high-speed trolling and using stick-baits, it’s likely the ‘good old days’ will last a long time in Vanuatu.
Greg Pilkington is an American skipper who owns and operates Topless Charters based out of Port Vila, Vanuatu. He specialises in half- and full-day charters aboard his nine-metre walk-around vessel.
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