So I had a couple of mates come over for some fishing in Vtu. We wanted to fish some unseen country on other islands, so I chartered my mates boat Nambas

 https://www.nambasfishingcharters.com/ .

We did 4 days away and one local day. The fishing here these days is very tough since the longliners from a certain country moved in a few years ago (Covid). Nothing like it was 10 yrs ago, so you have to work very hard for every fish. We caught more dogtooth than everything else combined.

 Maybe 20+ That wasn’t specifically the plan, but the cupboard is fairly bare in terms of free ranging pelagics. The dogtooth are territorial and prefer certain spots. They are a rare species these days locally – because of the fishing pressure from Recs and charter boats. So moving a bit wider (beyond the range of day charters) gave us access to them. We did our best to release as many as possible and were quite successful – even with the ones on treble hooks. A slightly hazardous occupation, but we wanted to free as many as possible – particularly the smaller guys.

They are brutal fighters and we got spooled by one in a single vertical dive from hookup. 300+m of 100lb braid at 14+ kg drag. All gone in the space of as long as it took to pull the line to the end of the reel. The spool was still too hot to touch 10 min later.

Over the 5 days and lots of ground covered (we trolled most everywhere), not 1 marlin bite.

We fished from dawn (or pre dawn) til sunset basically.