Advice & Info: "Exploring the wilds"..... the Solomons part I. by Capt. Asparagus

Over recent times, I have had the luxury of travelling to the Solomon Islands on several fishing trips. Each trip has been great fun, in a place of such tropical beauty that I just cannot resist returning.

On the last few of these trips, I have been lucky enough to stumble upon Dirk and Cathy Sierling, and their Charter Fishing boat, the Amanda Jane. As the only operational Fishing Charter larger than Longboat size, the Amanda Jane offers the “legs” to get out wide and target the real Big boys of tropical Fishing.., the Blue Marlin, Sailfish, Tunas and other open ocean pelagic fish often beyond the safe reach of the smaller boats.

Amanda Jane operates from Gizo, the capital of the Western Province of the Solomon Islands, although I first met her as an auxiliary charter from Joe Entrikins’ Zipolo Habu Fishing Resort.

On a recent trip back to NZ, Dirk and Cathy told me of a place that to my innocent ears, sounded pretty fantastic, an area called the “Manning Straits”, between Choiseul and St Isobel Islands... a full days steaming from their base at Gizo. As they described the area, the mental picture was of an area teeming with never before fished for fish, never before fished on lagoons, and sand flats as far as the eye can reach to explore and mess about on. Oh, man, Heaven.

Then, hallelujah and little tinkly bells, before I could say “Take me there, no expense spared!!”, they came out and said “How’d you like us to take you there, if you pay for the Diesel?” Being the sly and crafty dog that I am, I cunningly acted all reticent for, oh, all of a second, before leaping up and yelling “Yes!, Yes!! Yippee!!!” As you can see, I am a soul of discretion and restraint.

Well, from then on, a large part of my time was spent on planning this trip. To share the minimal costs, I roped in Keith Ingram to go along to carry my overweight tackle box, arranged my tickets with Dive and Fishing Travel, and at the appointed hour, boarded the Solomon Airlines Flight to Honiara, Gizo, and Paradise!

Our arrival at Gizo was a welcome change from the Auckland we had left, the Warm Tropical Breeze, Calm weather, blue skies and crystal clear waters a stark contrast from the muddy murky Manukau we had left behind in rainy cold Auckland.... ooh, man it was awesome. And HOT! Whew! After a fast run across the lagoon in one of the water taxis to the Gizo Hotel, I could not wait to get into the comfort of a nice, air conditioned room... oh, Bliss!

After a spell of lapping up the refreshing coolness, I headed out to talk to Dirk and Cathy about their plans for Keith and I for the next week. Sitting in the cool bar, Dirk ran through what he had in mind. The next day, Monday, he suggested a short trip of just a few hours, around Gizo Island itself to acclimatise us to this tropical climate, as well as giving them the rest of the day to arrange our trip across to Choiseul on Tuesday. We would then have the next two full days to look around the area, before heading back to Gizo on Friday, in time to fly home on Saturday. This plan sounded fine to Keith and I, so it was to be.

Next morning, standing on the Gizo Hotel Jetty waiting for the final preparations for our days jaunt, I was amazed to find, cruising about the piles of the wharf, schools of Giant and Bluefin Trevally, many over 15lbs, constantly circling through masses of large mackerel-sized baitfish. Oh, man, what was a poor fisho to do but race off and grab a spin-set to see if I could tempt one of these beasties to have a play. For the next hour or more, I was oblivious to the comings and goings about me, as I watched time and again these big Trevally follow in my various cast offerings. Yo-zuri Minnows, Soft Plastic grubs and Shads, even small poppers, all were intensely interesting to these fish, but they were just too well fed to be bothered having a crack at the little lures.

The only one to actually get a hit was a soft plastic 5 inch Key Largo grub, hit right at my feet by a particularly aggro little fish ( little in this case meaning 5 kilo),but as I watched in horror, all it did was chomp off the waggling tail, then disappeared leaving me a tailless lure. Oh, brother, talk about an exercise in frustration!

It was just as well that Cathy chose this time to tell me all was ready, it was time for us to go. Once away from the jetty and heading through the reefs, I was again able to relax, free from the torture of teasing Trevally.

As we were in deep water, but surrounded by reefs, we decided to troll Bibbed Minnows and Tremblers, rather than surface Lures, targeting Spanish Mackerel and Dogtooth Tuna. To mix up this pattern of Yo-zuri Bonitas and L-Jack Magnums, I put out a Williamson Bait-o-matic (BoM1) out in the middle of the spread.

We were heading for an area called “Grand Central”, a deep drop off from a rim reef where two current lines converged, according to Dirk and Cathy, a real fish hot spot. It was here that a year or so before, they had watched a huge Dog-tooth barrel out of the water, leaping clear over the Amanda Janes Canopy, drenching them with it’s splash on the other side of the boat. Man, if only we could get into one of those beasts, I’d be a happy boy.

On our second pass through the area, my Bait-o-matic was hit hard, line screaming off in a short but very sharp run of about 70 metres or so. Getting stuck into it, I was surprised at how easily it then came in. With only a few more half hearted runs, a good 10kilo Spanish Mackerel soon came to the boat, to be gaffed by the hovering Cathy. O.K.! First blood to Captain Asparagus!

On the 15 kilo gear I was using this fish gave a pretty good account of itself, but came to the boat fast enough to evade the attentions of the ever present Sharks. For this reason I don’t usually use lighter line than this, I have lost altogether too many fish to Sharks trolling on 8 kg line in the tropics. The fish I don’t mind so much, it’s my lures the sharks usually take with them that I miss!

We trolled on, heading further along the edge of beautiful reefs toward the Island that John F Kennedy washed up onto during World War 2 after his run-in with the Imperial Japanese Navy. The sight of all this reef, washed by a sluggish tropical swell and rimmed with white water, ideal Giant Trevally territory, soon had me asking Dirk to slow down his troll speed a little, so I could chuck a popper about to see if I could finally get to grips with a G.T.

Not a problem I was told, and before long a Surface Bull Popper was heading for a splash-down over the shallow reef. It took a while, with nothing happening for 20 minutes or so, until one particular deep gut leading into the maze of reef shallows caught my eye. Keith was of a similar idea, as I barrelled my cast out into what I hoped would be G.T. territory, Keith told me to cast into it. As soon as I started my retrieve, I half turned to Keith to ask if that was where he wanted it, only to see his eyes bug out as they focused on something behind me.

I didn’t need telling what it was, as at the exact same instant, my Live Fibre rod curled over hard as something with a lot of oomph decided it like the look of my popper. Spinning back, all I saw was the remains of a huge white splash, and my line hissing off across the reef.

Keith was bouncing up and down, yelling “Did you see That! What a fish! G.T. for sure!” Me, I wasn’t so sure, as the fish ran at speed (rapidly emptying my spool of line, luckily I was using 30lb Fireline, so a spool full of this stuff is about 300metres...heaps if it stays away from the coral) across the reef and then very luckily circled about and headed into deep water. This was reminiscent of the many Sharks I have caught before on poppers, so I was cautiously saying it may well be a shark.

Well, just this once, I was wrong! No, don’t be too surprised, even great guys like me make the very occassional miststeak. (DELIBERATE SPELLING ERROR). It took a fair while, I was constantly fighting the urge to crank up the drag, but really the line was loaded to the max already, and I was slowly making line. Some twenty minutes after hooking up, the deep silver flash of a healthy Giant Trevally proved Keith right. A few seconds later, and Cathy slid the gaff into this fish, a solid 25lb Trev.

This was my best trevally yet, I have in the past hooked into fish of at least 30kg, but these fish have always monstered me, so I was pleased to even the score with this fish, only average sized for a G.T.

By now I was pretty stuffed. The combination of the poppering, then the fight, plus the tropical heat, left me pretty much dis-inclined to do much more, so I let Keith have a burl with the popper. He did no good with that, apart from a follow-up from a fair sized Red Bass, so when my TLD25 again screamed into life beside him, he gladly abandoned the poppering to bring this new arrival to heel.

This fish stripped line at such speed, and so much of it, I was waiting for a Sailfish to leap from the waters, but really rounding out my day of bad calls, Keith soon had another, somewhat smaller, Mackerel at the boat.

By now it was mid-afternoon, we were nearing the end of our circumnavigation of Gizo, and we could see a nasty tropical squall building up in the distance, so Dirk put the throttles down and we powered quickly back to base, with me leading the charge once ashore for the Gizo Hotels swimming pool and immersion in the blissfully warm water.. aaaahh!

After one last night soaking up the air conditioning, I got up at 4-45 next morning, (those that know me will be amazed at this, but under extreme circumstances, even I can make the effort to get up at that awfull hour) and after a quick shower and cuppa, headed to Keiths unit to get him on the go. As it turned out, Keith had been “on the go” all night, with a major case of Delhi-belly, suspiciously like the bug going around Auckland at that time. Poor old Keith was in no condition to pack up the boat and enjoy a nice relaxing breakfast, so I let Him rest up for as long as possible until, at 7 o’clock, we finally had to drag him to the boat for our trip to Choiseul.

We were to dog-leg to the Fish factory at Noro first though, to pick up Deisel , and I took the chance to re-aquiant myself with the area. The Blackett Straits, Kolombaranga, all places I dream of in the middle of our coldest winter. Once finished at Noro, we were off for Choiseul!

On the long haul across to this other Chain of islands, across what is known as “the Slot”, I took the time between the few strikes of Mahimahi, Wahoo and one lone Sailfish to reflect that in 1942-43, this area was one of the bloodiest areas of combat of the war. So much of the Imperial Japanese and American navies are resting on the bottom of this stretch of water that it has earned the name “Iron Bottom Sound”. Even some NZ ships lie deep here, a sobering thought.

Still, this was a fishing trip, not a history tour, and as we neared Choiseul and prepared to run through the Nggosselle (pron “’goselly”) we hauled in the rather chewed up skirted lures to replace them with Tremblers and Rapalas for the run through this amazing passage of water.

A few kilometres long, winding, and as wide as the Waikato at Hamilton, flanked all the way by dense virgin rainforest, this waterway has a tidal flow running at around 3-4 knots constantly. Through the pass lurk Spanish Mackerel, Barracuda, Sharks, Trevally, Crocodiles (Yikes!!!).... definitely not a place for a swim, but great to fish. As the day was wearing on,  we could spend little time fishing the area, the few casts with a light spin set in the more jungly reaches of the pass netting me only one small coral cod.

Once clear of the turbulent flow at the far end of the pass, we were suddenly in Trevally country again, and this time casting the Tobimaru minnow about resulted in immediate strong hits from small 2-3 kg trevally. Great fun, but again, time was pressing.....

It was as the sun was dropping towards the encicling mountains that we finally reached our anchorage and the place we were to stay, a “Homestay” package offered by Karly and John Hutton.

John is mostly on the main island, building Fibreglass boats, so Karly is left to look after the home with her three kids and several staff, so it was Karly who was the driving force behind the idea of starting up Homestays for visiting tourists. The fact that fishermen would be the perfect people to appreciate the extraordinary surrounds of this remote Island was just my happy luck.

Now we were here, once settled in to our accomodations, and as Karly whipped up a top Island-style meal (Lots of Rice and Fish), we settled back in another air-conditioned house, to discuss our plans now we were here. What would we do next?

The options here are enormous. My first call was to visit the Flats... this area was a place I had to see. Keith was far more interested in the drop-offs and sea-mounts, deep reefs and open Ocean in the other direction, but as he was still recovering from his illness, he didn’t have the energy to argue his case... so, next morning, to the Flats it was!!!