Paradise refound in Solomons.

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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Tangi DnA Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Aug 2012 at 2:30pm
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Looks like you guys are having a ball up there and really enjoying it. Thumbs Up
 
We are suffering thru some terrible weather, heres a pic from yesterday.
 
 
Oh and the fishing was pretty good tooLOL
 
Great read, and keep it comming Clap
 
 
I always take life with a grain of salt, ...plus a slice of lemon, ...and a shot of tequila.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (1) Likes(1)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Aug 2012 at 10:00pm
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After seeing Bazza and Adrian with their haul of pesky piscines, I must admit my resolution to avoid fishing for the day wavered, so we decided to head out around 4pm for our own looksee. It had been a windy and wet (but still warm) day today, but miracle of miracles, at bang on 4 pm it cleared, so Cliff and I were able to clear off for the Diamond narrows area as per plan.
we tried a few new spots, Cliff dropping a nice fish off Goldie, until we wound up at "the bommie" at the bottom end of the Diamond Narrow. A couple of casts in and my little R2C dumbbell popper got smacked, and soon a fat little 3kg bluefin trev was in the boat..... phew, the monkey was off me back! ;-)
Nopics though, as this was just standard bluefin no;4975, so we carried on.
Soon Cliffy had a baracuda on the deck as well, in the process of releasing same our driver, Harold, managed to wear the tail hook thru the skin of his thumb. No biggies really....after all, itwasn't MY skewered skin :-)... and by simply squeezing down the barb we were able to roll the hook out backwards, no worries.
Still, that put the hex on that spot, so we took off for the top of the Narrows to see what was going on there.
Short answer, sod all.
poppered all along the reefs and bommies until we neared the marker at the start of the narrowsagain, having done a huge loop around tonys Island, Noro Bommie and the diamond reef, a good hour of solid casting, for the grand total of twohalf-hearted follow ups. things were looking decidedly average, when just as I was about to call it quits, some long-toms mugged somme baitfissh off our bow.
I shot a quick cast out over the area, and half way back a large longtom skiped in and to our surprise impaled itself on me popper. OK, a bit of fun, but..... hang on! Behind us several patches of baitfish were rising to the surface, as if someone had flicked a switch.
Well boys and girls, from then on it was all go. Baitfish were getting munted all about us, Harold killed the motors so we drifted slowly down the inlet towards noro on the gentle breeze, casting left and right around the boat as  baitschools were coming into range.
Fun? Oh yes. yes indeed....
... a none too shabby GT nailed the tiny dumbbell on my nice 20lb light popper set, followed by several explosions behind Cliffs lure that left him cursing the %&$^#@ short-sighted stupid fish, with fait justification I must say.
I took the time after landing my fish to get pics (well, obviously), and changed to a larger R2C dumbell, as it was getting darker and I wanted something a little more visible.
First cast, and as I started winding, cliff yelled, "Got one! At last, where's the gaff!"... as he said this, my lure too got eaten with extreme prejudice, so I never had the chance to admire his capture before I was locked into another good fish..... before long Ihad my own need for the gaff, a good Mackerel! sweet!
.... and then I was able to admire Cliffs capture.... as Harold gaffed my fish, he held it with Cliffs, and Isnapped off a quick shot....
....
...it was a hoot.
for the next 30 mins or so it was mayhem.... so many blind fish missed shots at our lures, mackerel were smashing bait from below and exploding skywards for several metres, sharks were slamming the bait schools, and one of the biggest GTs any of us have ever seen chased my popper clear out of the water without hooking up (thank heavens, no way would the little set have handled the beast).... it was awesome, we kept trying til it was well dark, and we headed home with bait being chased all around us.
Awesome afternoon.... I gotta say, I love the Solomons, Zipolo Habu is just frikken AWESOME!!! :-)
Well, I am bushed, gonna go hit the hay now, nite all!
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Aug 2012 at 3:10pm
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Good day yesterday. Took off about ten a.m., and the weather was just idyllic.... but hot, admittedly hot. Damned hot. Flat calm, mirror-like passage across the lagoon heading nor'west heading for Double Island on the Blackett straits, to see if we could find some more popper action out there, hoping to make our way as far as reremana for some bottom bouncing.
Stopped off as we crossed the reef at double, and in the glass calm water, clear as gin, we just shut down the engines and drifted, admiring the natural aqaurium.
Spectacular, simply spectacular. But I already have a million and a half pics of this area, so instead grabbed a light spin set and set about inceasing my fish photos library. All small fish, but glorious colours....
.... gotta do more of that sorta thing.
Soon after, we headed on, swapping the toy gear for slightly more assertive gear, biffing poppers around schools of bait we saw hanging off the point at double, picking up a nice bluefin trev on the second cast...
... this smacking the little Sebile stick shadd.
The more I use it, the more I just love the light little popper/stickbait set, the p.e.3 kilwell blank is just such a delight to use.
Anyhow, we cruised on, Cliffy managed to find more short-sighted fish ( he specialises in these it seems, it is uncanny the number of fish he can't hook into! ;-) Of course, I do not mention this repeatedly at all, oh dear no!)
Anyhow, after hitting, and missing at, Hotspot, we thought we'd shoot out wide somewhere different, so zapped out to Nusa Makuti, an isolated island about 2 miles east of Manta Ray Island, to see what we could find.
By this time the still calm had spawned the inevitable thunderstorm, this time over gizo, which was rolling slowly our direction, sucking air into it's base, picking up to a brisk little 10-15kn breeze which made casting a bit of a challenge.
However, I managed to sink a popper into the gob of a very large gt, which then proceeded to snick off my 80lb trace with it's tail shutes (bugger, I liked that lure!), and cliffie had a mackerel nail his lure from below, driving up a good 3m from the water before spitting the lure at the top of its arc, not more than 20ft in front of us, before he too scored a nice bluefin....
....
... asyou can see, by this time the rain was getting very close, so we shot off quick split for double, crossed the reef with the rain hard on our heels, and headed on home to Lola Island.
Great day again.
I just cannot describe the beauty yousee everywhere here in these islands.... man, that free aquarium called the vonavona lagoon is just magical.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Stuck Here Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Aug 2012 at 3:22pm
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[QUOTE
I just cannot describe the beauty yousee everywhere here in these islands.... man, that free aquarium called the vonavona lagoon is just magical.
[/QUOTE]
Still can't work out  if it is jealousy or a down right geniune dislike of you lot that has me upsetLOL, great pics and story though..........
Family Law Court = SNAFU!!!!
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Aug 2012 at 11:43am
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Whew. Long day in the boat yesterday. Shot out from here at 9am, headed for double island and the pass thru the reef to the blackett straits, hoping to get some more nice underwater shots of colourful fish, but it was just too riffley there for good pics, so instead we canned that idea, and slowly moved over to the bommie area just off Double Island itself.
Baitfish were up on the surface, acting nervous as well, in a couple of groups. Cliffie fired at one group astern, I cast at the group for'ard. First cast, and a small group of golden trevs made darting runs at the popper, really raising the ol' B.P., so another cast went right back into the same spot. This time a couple more trevs had a slash at the popper, a R2C medium size dumbbell, but after just a couple of second a bar of silver just shouldered them out of the way and inhaled the lure... a big, boof-headed barracuda!
 ....
... man that sucker must've wanted it! As it was zapping about, we saw more trevs trying to grab the head of the lure out of it's mouth.... stupid fish, this is how you wind up with double hook-ups!
From here we moved on, slowly heading up to the reef passes at Hotspot, the extreme low tides reducing the optons a bit, but again, near the Hotspot gap, a cast over a deep coral head resulted in a flash of deep red, and this time my little R2C Wideglide got nailed....
, a nice fat mean fish.
We worked the area a little more, Cliffie again finding some more blind fish (which manage to miss the hooks of the lures even though they pull the lures underwater! Stoopid fish), we crossed into the lagoon itself again, crossing across to the Reremana passage, hoping to get outside to thebottom fishing outside. Sadly it was still pretty choppy, certainly a pretty decent swell running thru, so we caanned that idea, and trolled off towards MantaRay Island to tthe east. Seeing as we were heading that way, we popped a couple of skirts out, but no joy, even though we cruised all the way across to Makuti island.
Once in the lee of the reef at Makuti, we finally decided to drop the bottom gear, picked up a honeycomb cod and a couple of jobfish, but it wasn't electric fishing, and the wind was lifting a little, so we shot back over to double to try the bottom out there.
A lot shallower at 150m, we still picked up some more fish, but by this time  Cliff and Iwere wearing down, the thing about sunny tropical days is they tend to be pretty damn hot, so for a last stop on the way home, we popped in to the same bommie again.... to find the same schools of bait....hmmmm..
well, we had to try.
First cast (again! So often it is the 1st cast that picks up the fish), and there was this huge crash on the lure as somehing pretty gnarly climbed all over the popper....
...
... not a bad way to end the day really.
By the time we got back to the resort we had been out for 8 hours.... a long day in the tropical sun, so cooked and clapped out Cliffie and I have resolved to have a bit of a lazy day today! Probably head out in the arvo I guess, see how we fare then. :-)
Now, better go read Bazza's account of the adventure with the coconut crabs, I wonder if he has woven that little tale of adventure and daring-do yet!
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2012 at 9:59pm
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Been a few dys, more of the same old same old really. warm, lazy days, a little fishing here and there, it has been our mid-triphiatus these last few days, that and 8 yachts (5 more due in the next day or so) have made things here at the resort a little hectic .
Still, cliff and I headed out into the wind tossed ocean, battled bravely thru the massive waves to fish the rough waters off kohinngo island.
Just trolling along with halco's.... like I said, we're getting lazy... picked up a few coral trout (highfin coral trout)
 ....
... and after a while Cliffie bagged a small dogtooth tuna, just a puppy....
.... but he was stoked to bag a new species, and also a chance to have dogtooth sashimi, supposed to be the premier of raw fish. Good luck with that, yuck. :-)
Finished off with  bit of poppering, more of the same, picked up 5 or so kingfish, and got back to find a spearfisherman had a maori wrasse for sale to the restaurant...,
.... beautiful fish, and apparently the lips are worth hundreds of dollars per kilo on the asian markets, but hey, never mind :-)
Well, feel a lazy day coming on tomorrow, but we'll see....
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Lethal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Aug 2012 at 3:50am
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what a cool fish...
your having way too much fun Capt A...
Thanks for everything you did for us Eric. may you rest in peace, You were one of the real legends of NZ recreational fishing
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Aug 2012 at 11:58am
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Had a real fun day yesterday, we finally headed out for the open water yesterday as the wind dropped to nil, found a new fad only 14kms from the resort, nice and close.
Bagged 5 yellowfin, 2 rainbow runners, a skipjack and a mahimahi, fed another mahi long range to a shark, it was very cool. overcast skies though so couldn't be fagged getting pics, got dozens of similar ones already, besides it was too full on to take pics as the fish were being caught, and I don't like pics after the fish has been in the icebin.
Then we headed off to rendova, tried some new bottom fishing spots, got a mixed bag of teng snapper, longtail and ruby snapper, before we headed baack for base in the mid arvo. Very very good day! :-)
Today we are going to try up the mangroves again as the breeze is back , and a half-day is a nice option for our old bones! :-)
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Aug 2012 at 6:45pm
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Oy vay. Well, got busy the last couple of days, not just with trying to find Bazza's passport either.
So much happened, I can't tell it all, as I am somewhat bushed, so will just post up a few of the pics.... which being on a slightly faster upload speed, will not be such a mission! :-)
... damn that was fast! 15 seconds tops! Would have taken 5 minutes in the Sollies, on a good day too! Anyhow, more....
nice little dogtooth, trolling past manta ray. Note the rough sea state, borderline for fishing up there, soooo rough! :-)
I just had to repeat that pic, it is such an awesome looking fish.....
.... just a few of the tons of yellowfin that go into the cannery up here every week. These are 30-40kg fish. The longliners get yfin over the 100kg mark, which is a hassle as they have to be individually weighed on a separate, larger, set of scales!
... what we thought were small skippies turned out to be small yfin, inside the reef at Munda bar!

cute colourful, small fish...still psychopathic enough to attack lures as big as their heads!
... the awsome coastline off the back of parara Island. Lost 2 poppers in quick succession here, one on a huge barracuda that just ripped my 50lb fireline down and thru the bommies, cutting me off (b@$tard!), the other a Dunno fish, which did the same on my 20lb set (just before deciding to go to the 50lb set to show them who was boss..... tui).

12 yachts from NZ anchored up at Lola.  Or, as we like to call it, Westhaven North.
... a colourful critter from the mangroves.
Well, that is about enough I think. Didn't take many pics the last few days, as the weather, while calm enough, was pretty grey, and made pics look pretty bland.
As ever I loved the place, always bummed out to be leaving, but always again happy to be home. Home, where you do not need mozzie nets, you don't sweat at every movement, and sleep like a lamb in our cool climate. Nice really :-)
Then again......




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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Bossco Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Aug 2012 at 8:52pm
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Something seriously wrong about those yellow fin ending up in cans....
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Aug 2012 at 10:58pm
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Big time industry over there.  The very good thing is that now the bulk of the longlined tuna catch, and the seined tuna as well, are going to have to be landed in the solomons before being dispatched overseas.... means no more ships of X tonnes simply sailing off to their base with holds full of X3 tonnes of fish. Allowing for improved monitoring of the catch is a very good thing, it is just now down to the politicians to restrict the numbers of fishing licences they issue.... however, the bribes to the officials concerned will mean this will be a very slow process.
Out of Noro, the one port in the Sols that all the boats will be using now, NFD have hugely increased their base, putting in the facilities and infrastructure to handle 120 reefer containers a month to move thru the port.
That is one hell of a lot of fish.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote JoshW Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Aug 2012 at 2:11am
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That pics a good advertisement for not eating canned tuna though...look at the state of those things...I wouldn't even feed them to my cat!

Solomons looks like a cool place stu, my uncle visited a while back and loved it. thanks for sharing.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Aug 2012 at 1:22pm
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Those fish were frozen solid, straight out of the ships, about to head into the cannery. Once the boat had offloaded the more valuable and immediately usefull yellowfin tuna, which were to be sent straight to the factory for immediate canning, they started to offload their haul of skipjack tuna, the main catch up here.

. The conveyor taking frozen skippies from one of the NFD seiners....

... filling up the temporary freezer bins...., before they head 50m over to....

... a reefer container where they are all double handled and thrown into the reefer, reefers holding about 22tn each, then stored at -40deg and shipped off to asia and around the wrld to the cheapest canneries that can be found to can fish to a budget.... this is why you won't catch me buying tinned tuna any more from anonymous but chaep sources ( ever wonder where the sealords stuff is actually from?) but only this good Sol taiyo stuff.
So, tuna you get from thailand, asia or elsewhere often has been tossed about and thrashed... although those fish are all frozen solid. However, the tuna you get from the Soltai Cannery there at Noro is perfect, no tuna in the world would be as fresh or well treated before being canned. The result, the Solomon Taiyo tinned tuna, is a superb product.
The long lined tuna, mostly yellowfin, is sent out frozen to japan mainly, so is in really good nick to get the best money possible, that being such a demanding market.

So, if you really want to get a premier quality product, not the cheapest ****e the supermarkets can source, try insisting to your supermarket to get only Solomon Taiyo canned tuna. See how far you get!

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