The inshore opportunities of Samoa

The adrenaline surge as the water explodes when a GT erupts from the crystal-clear depths with your favourite popper in it’s powerful jaws is something you’ll never forget. It’s the moment when the slow-motion switch is flicked and what follows becomes indelibly etched in your memory banks. Once it’s happened, you’ll be in the privileged company of the many anglers who are always up for a relentless casting session in an attempt to re-live that instant in time.

On a recent trip to Samoa we were fortunate enough to spend a couple of mornings with Greg Hopping and his team on Get ‘er Done, fishing the inner coral reefs on the southern side of Upolo Island. Leaving from Sinalei Reef Resort, we spent two mornings fishing the outside of the nearby coral reefs, casting poppers for giant trevally (GTs) and using small lures and soft baits on lighter gear for bluefin trevally, jobfish, bass and other reef species.

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GTs can grow to over 60kg (the current IGFA world record stands at 72.8kg, from Kagoshima, Japan), so you’ll need some decent gear if you’re planning to tangle with one of these powerhouses.

An ability to cast a reasonable distance is a definite advantage, as you cover more water and better work the territory where GTs hang out – the gutters and broken ground where they can ambush unsuspecting baitfish. It makes good sense to check with your charter operator what gear they run on the boat and what you need to bring, including which poppers or stick-baits seem to be working well. It will save you taking gear you don’t need.

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A solid rod with enough flex in the tip to really load up and get the distance is advisable, matched with the best quality reel you can afford. You’ll need to pull heavy drags reliably and a Shimano Stella or Daiwa Saltiga are ideal reel options.

On our trip, stick-baits weren’t working and the more successful popper colours seemed to be dark-bodied ones with light flashes. GTs have an amazing ability to see or sense a lure in the air and you need to be prepared for a strike as soon as the lure touches the water. A great tip from our guide, Dan Lyons, was to flick the bail over a second or two before the popper lands and give the reel a crank as it splashes down. You’ll be surprised how often your lure gets hoovered on touchdown!

GTs are a bit like our kingfish: they are dirty fighters and generally run for cover as soon as they are hooked. Razor-sharp coral on the reef edges will slice through 100lb leader like a hot knife through butter and the same goes for 37kg braid.

Often you’ll hook up in quite shallow water and have to apply heavy pressure to drag the fish out to deeper water where you can conduct the battle on more favourable terms. There’s also the option of leading the fish away from trouble with a lighter drag. Fish sometimes head away from the reef when drag resistance is minimal. Like all fishing, it’s a bit of a mystery tour and you need to be prepared for various scenarios.

There’s plenty of debate as to whether single or treble rigged lures get more hookups. From an angler’s safety perspective, the most important thing is remembering there are two parts of the lure bristling with really sharp things and they will hurt you if you get in their way. Let your crew manage the fish beside and inside the boat. They know what they’re doing and you don’t want to have some part of your anatomy attached to one end of the lure with a thrashing fish on the other!

Samoa’s inshore fishing is not just about topwater action – lures and soft-baits will catch a variety of reef species and jigging the drop-offs can deliver some gut-busting dogtooth tuna. We took light spin rods matched with spinning reels in the 3500-4000 size range and had a great time catching other species, including bluefin trevally, coral trout, jobfish and red bass on the reef edges.

A good guide is invaluable. Gregg Hopping and his team at Troppo Fishing Adventures have been doing this for years – they know where the fish are and how to catch them. Guide Dan was a constant source of advice, tips and tricks to ensure we learnt plenty and maximised our time on the water. 

Expect the unexpected

Samoa is not recognised as one of the Pacific’s best topwater fishing destinations, but it can produce surprisingly good results, says Grant Dixon, who over the years has been a regular visitor to its reefs and seamounts…

I was introduced to Samoa’s toothy reef population while trolling bibbed minnows over the foul ground just outside Apia Harbour. I was at the helm of one of the local boats, an Aussie-built alloy catamaran that had all the sea-keeping characteristics of a brick, being almost as wide as it was long.

With a team of lady anglers on board – the Pink Po Po’s – we were fishing one of the early SIGFA contests. It was rough and the girls were a little green around the gills. A red and white diving plug was run out the back as we headed for the drop-off and hopefully blue marlin territory.

No sooner had the lure reached its trolling depth than it was smashed – literally.

The hooks eventually pulled and on retrieving the line my one-piece diving plug was now a two-piece, after being bitten in half. It was held together by the wire that runs from the towing point to the hooks amidships and at the tail.

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I didn’t know what had hit it, suspecting perhaps a reef or bull shark, but upon showing the lure to more experienced Samoan skippers on my return to shore they unanimously agreed it had been a dogtooth.

In more recent years I have specifically targeted Samoa’s inshore species. On an exploratory visit prior to the ‘Fish Samoa’s South Side’ readers’ trip, our host Greg Hopping aboard Pure Indulgence put us onto some great action that resulted in a mixed catch. The reader’s trips themselves also produced some interesting results, especially jigging the South Side’s seamounts.

The deeper pins don’t get a lot of fishing pressure and consequently their inhabitants aren’t lure shy.

One trip the 130 and 200g Catch! Beta Bug lures did the damage, especially once the hooks were rigged on light wire, producing both dogtooth tuna and GTs from the deep pins in 100m-plus of water. It was the first time I had used them and now I never leave town without them! They are worked with a slow, deliberate action, not unlike to the way you fish a micro-jig for snapper.

I had always believed GT’s only frequented the reef zone, but on this trip I was pleasantly proven wrong and we found them over pins located well offshore.

When fishing in Samoa, you have to expect the unexpected!

   This article is reproduced with permission of   
New Zealand Fishing News

December 2018 - Grant Blair
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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