Solomon Islands, demon fishing....

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    Posted: 10 Sep 2015 at 6:03pm
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yup, back here again.....well hell, they have this awesome boat here, so I figured I may as well use it! :-)
for the first week of so I was here with my mate Billy Ho and Linda, they were combining a little fishing with filming the ww2 wrecks etc for their tv show "Low Gear", and although the poppering was hard, we did manage to find a good smattering of red bass, the odd trevally and so on, without a doubt the pick of the bunch being Bily ho's first sailfish......
.... oops, more later.....
....its later. Anyhow, after Bill and Linda left, I popped out for a day with Jenno, daughter of the resort owners, where she bagged her first ever fish on a popper....
... a nice golden trevally, chased in by a very large and hungry barracuda....note the trimmed tail.
Yesterday my old mate Cliff Solomon arrived for a couple of weeks, despite his mild mannered looks, this guy as a Demon on the fishing, proving it this afternoon, when in three hours we poppered ourselves two mahimahi, a Bluefin trevally off Sark Point, and four GTs off the munda bar....which was just loaded with baitfish today, schools all along the current lines. We wont mention the poppers lost on sharks..., dammit. The best fish we bagged was a strapping 15kg fish on the 30lb set....
.... it is one FAT fish man!
Well, I will try to keep you posted on developments over the next couple of weeks, but internet has been very patchy....none at all last week, so it is not always all that easy!
 
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.

Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote FredKaiser Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Sep 2015 at 1:18pm
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Good fish and good report!!! Liked!!
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Sep 2015 at 10:39am
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The last couple of days have been pretty slow, with cliff doing the World War Two tour, going across the lagoon to see a downed P-39 bell airacobra fighter....pop quiz, what was unusual about the airacobra? Ok, answer is, the engine is behind the pilot, with the prop shaft spinning thru between the pilots legs, and that is was the only fighter to have tricycle landing gear, which took pilots some getting used to. Good thing, bullets from behind got stopped by the engine, not the pilot, bad things, that if it crashed the pilot, although un-shot, became a thin red laminate between the ground and a large heavy V-12 engine. Pluses and minuses eh lol.
Then it is on to look at a knocked out U.S. Stuart light tank, an underground Japanese hospital, the across to look at a submerged jap freighter and ruined guns at the entrance to the enoghae harbour.
An interesting tour if you are into war relics and rust I guess.
Yesterday we went out in the afternoon, heading for the chain of reefs off bairoko, when, as we passed the port at Noro, we saw splashes in the area, diverting to have a looksee, we found a large pod of manta rays sculling along... I had thought the splash I saw had been that of a free jumping sailfish, but no, I was assured, it is just those mantas.
So, turning the boat back around, and what should come out of the water just in front of us? Guess, go on, see if you can. Nope, it was a sailfish! I love it when I can say "told a so" in an annoyingly smug voice.
So, trolling for a fair while resulted in a grand total of no luck, so we headed on to the reefs around the corner. They were loaded with baitfish, big schools everywhere, but with all that food around, I guess our poppers were not sufficiently interesting, as nothing came up to the lures. Mutter mumble grizzle.
I have seldom seen so much bait here as at the moment, the lagoon is alive with schools of bait, from the swarms of small 40mm rainbow fish, which when chased spray out from the water in cascading showers of silver , to garfish/piper and Buma, to our eyes Jack mackerel look a likes and relatives. Fusiliers of several types fill out this mix, along with scads and small tuna like fish. There is no shortage here of baitfish for the predators to chose from.
Anyhow, a downpour was heading our way, so we rolled down the clears on the boat, and headed home. I picked up a small 4kg brassy trevally on the way to give our driver, tasker, some dinner, and relaxed.
Today we are off once Tasker gets back from showing some folks around Skull Island, a site where you can see the skulls of particularly famous pre European chiefs and a few of their more notable victims in a small shrine. Personally not my cup of tea, but there ya go.
Last night I caught a few Buma off the jetty to use as swimming baits in some trolled lures today, to see if that can tempt another sailfish to come play. We will see........
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.

Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Sep 2015 at 8:04pm
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What a day. Woah. What. A. Day.
It is definitely Sailfish season, and the sails are in.
Our ability to actually CATCH the little buggers though, yes, well, that was a tad lacking. we tried though, boy, we tried.
Ran baits inside the lures, we had half a dozen hits, no hook ups though sadly, however there is always tomorrow.
However, when you can sit on the bow of the boat and take snaps of free jumping sailfish, you know there are a few around...
......
.....or two by two.....
..... yeah, I know , a bit blurry, but there ya go. As you can see, they were in really close to the shore.....
.....however there is a reason, as we soon saw......
..... a big pod of Pilot whales (false killer whales? Whatever).... was working up the Straits, split along either coastline, and they eat sailfish with great gusto. Indeed, about 500m ahead of us we sw them nail one..., I was yelling out to "leave my bloody sails alone", but for supposedly intelligent critters, they don't seem to speak English. They did however come in to sit on the bows pressure wave for five minutes or so, BIG animals man, it was very cool....sorry, no pics, just vid of that.
Yes, we did do some poppering as well, of course, bagged a GT as per normal, but boy we missed a heap too. Blind buggers, I swear, they cannot swim and open their mouths at the same time half of them....
... bugger! Missed!
So, all in all, a very eventful three or four hours on the water.
Roll on tomorrow man, Roll on!
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.

Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Uncle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Sep 2015 at 8:33pm
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Settle down Stu, you're having way too much fun~~lucky buggarLOL
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote mike_e Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Sep 2015 at 7:53pm
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Solomons is surely a nice place to visit even if it is for work
If you can go home and pull a $100 bill out , and flush it down the toilet, and if that doesn't bother you, then go ahead and buy a boat
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Sep 2015 at 8:08pm
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the southeasterlies relented enough today for us to cruise over to Haepei lagoon, under Rendova Island, baut day, typically tropically paradisical, bagged a nice wahoo among the skippies and the frigate birds working baitballs, it was well  cool.....
.... we shot back early when the wind started to lift again, 15kn breeze is deemed unfishable up here, at least by me it is lol......
more later.....
 
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.

Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote BigMike Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Sep 2015 at 3:19pm
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Man the colours on that Wahoo are awesome Cap'n!
Didnt the girls make it out this time?
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Sep 2015 at 1:28pm
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Well, Finally got back from the Sollies, will see what I can get up to in posting some pics soon ish.
My take on this trip..., More Sailfish than I have ever seen before up there, they were everywhere, and more baitfish along all the reefs, actually made it hard finding hungry GTs!
Bottom fishing was good and productive, all in all, had a great trip. What a way to spend a month! :-)
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.

Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2015 at 12:46pm
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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.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote NumnuT_AUS Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2015 at 6:41pm
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Living the dream CA!
 
great photos & report as usual
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Reel Deal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2015 at 8:45pm
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Mate we are all living through you, keep the photos coming !! Used your wire traces to good effect too thanks for sending me a selection amoungst a bunch of other tackle. Hugely appreciated. I owe you. Remember that.

Might scoot across to the solomons myself one of these days.
The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men's lives the hours spent on fishing - Assyrian Proverb
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Capt Asparagus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Oct 2015 at 9:07pm
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No worries mate, my pleasure..., and yes, you definitely should get over there! EVERYONE should! 😄
It is only my overwhelming natural humility that mars my perfection.

Captain Asparagus, Superhero, Adventurer.
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