OK, time for a bit of a photo dump....
Bottom fishing was pretty good, going out the sheltered side , off the bairoko harbour, we found some very nice ruby snapper in 200m of water....
, it was pretty marginal fishing conditions that day, we would have had ripples up to...ooo, say 25cm? Awful rough....
Imagine a snapper crossed with a kingi, that is your ruby snapper. They put up a good scrap just about to the top before they blow.
Next day....ummm, saturday before last it was, we decided to do a bit of a troll in the blackett straights, where Cliffie picked up this small yellowfin on a tremble/bibless minnow lure.
We had American scientist and Aid coordinator with us this day, my mate Chris, who was dead keen to get into a sailfish...sooo-ooo....
....we did. Nice fish too.
I had rigged an islander lure up for baits, with a big circle hook in the head to hold a strip bait, and as a stinger/tail hook, I used the last remaining SHARP game hook I had, a big 11/0. That was somethnig of an overkill for sailfish, but it was deadly sharp, I really file my sharpened hooks to a blade, basically if the fish missed the circle hook, it'd probably gaff itself on the big hook in the tail...that is what this fish did....it really vindicated my decision to go for a sharpened hook over a normal out-of-the-box one. Oh, normally for sails I would use a 7/0, so the 11/0 looked....odd. Effective though.
Then we did a bit more messing about poppering etc, just got standard 15-20lb GTs really, so didn't bother with pictures, then a couple of days later Chris had another free day, so headed out to work the fads this time. Got a mess of mahimahi, again, nothing special, they were all fish around this size....
...then we headed in as a breeze started to pick up, and as we neared Shark point/Munda light, we bagged another sail.... ahh, cant be bothered posting a pic, just the same as the others really, a 30kg odd fish.
We had another brief bottom fish again, got a bunch of nice Saddleback Bream....
and goldline jobfish, until sharks came and interupted play.... the bugger sat under the boat, about 20m down, and yaffled the fish coming past its nose!....hmmm, I would load the yuotube video of the shark underwater, but it doesn't work, no idea why,any ideas? I can watch it myself, just cant load it onto the site...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5N37TxVnI4&feature=em-upload_owner if you wanna try yourselves.
Last day I dont think I took any pics, I was too busy just enjoying myself. The lagoon was crystal clear, going across the shallows was like boating over an aquarium, once outside the reef we had pods of sailfish tail past the boat...a loop around got a tap and go, but without any bait, they didnt hang around, and then when we finally went back inside the lagoon and poppered along the inside of Skull Island, it was just too gobsmackingly beautiful to waste my time taking a picture. Imagine tropical sandy beach paradise, add a bit of extra beauty, and you've got it.
It was a great trip, a week or so too long really for my liking, I was hanging out to get home to a nice cool climate after a month up there, but as ever, Zipolo Habu in the Solomons is just this really really special place.
Oh! One last pic, while we had all the boats on the water working one day, Joe got me to grab a picture of the whole Zipolo Habu "fleet"....
...
left to right, Lethal Lisa, Thumper, Ramonalola(my boat), and the Zipolo boat. The pick of the bunch? Without hesitation, the Ramonalola....what an awesome boat, love it!
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.
Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.