Painting with the flash

Every time I open in Lightroom the Bermuda library I discover some nice shot that I haven't edited yet. I took this image at night and painted the sunbeds with my speedlights. To achieve a nice color contrast I turned the WB to tungsten and put a CTO gel on the speedlights. By doing so the sky turns intense blue and the foreground achieves a warm tone


During the post processing work I had to bring up a bit the sky becaus eit was too dark, and get a dimmer light on the foregrond, too bright and too hot. Some local adjustments have been also done to the land in the horizon, in order not to have a black spot.

Bermuda: new jigging paradise?

Is probably too early to say but the first clues have been quite impressive. We have just spent 5 days of fishing in the waters of this beautiful island and every single one of us has returned home excited and happy with the result. It was an exploratory trip, but the bases on which it was put together were strong. Bermuda holds 3 or 4 IGFA world records for both kind of Amberjack (Dumerili and Rivoliana). The biggest Greater Amberjack ever caught around the world comes from here, and if you put in the mix the abundance of Yellowfin Tunas, Groupers, Wahoo and many other different species, the landscape looks pretty bright.

Let me spend a word about the island itself first. It simply is a beautiful place. Neat, tidy, coloured, warm, peaceful, not polluted, green, blue... Again, a small and remarkably amazing paradise. People are nice too. Our captain, Peter Rahn, his wife Leslie and the boat's mate Steve are wonderful people, as well as many other inhabitants that we met and spent some time with. Lodging and dining is not the cheapest around, yet with the current value of the Euro compared to the Dollar is still doable.

Talking about the Captain and his fleet I have nothing but good words. Peter worked hard on something that is quite new for him. Jigging is a technique that requires a specific knowledge and thanks to his vast experience on the local reefs, he managed to constantly put the boat in the best spots. Theres many banks and reefs around the island, and not all of them are prooductive, yet he seemed to always know where to put the boat, and even if sometimes the tides were playing big time against us, when the fish turned on again, we were on top of them.

The first day we fished with the boat that we booked, a 41' Custom Express. But once returned from our fishing we noticed a super jigging boats moored near the Overproof. It was a 36' lobster boat, just arrived from Maine, and o boy, that was perfect. From day 2 we fished every day on the Son Rae, 5 guys in a row jigging elbow to elbow, or not even that because there was room to spare, without a tangle or a problem. The Son Rae is just the perfect jigging machine and we took full advantage of it.

One of the highlights, unexpected to be true, has been the variety of species we caught on jigs. I don't know if ti was 20 or more but every day we would catch 4 or 5 new critters. The mix of the subtropical water with the warm current of the Gulf creates a perfect environment, where fish from more moderate latitudes meet with other more typical of the tropics.

The amount of fish we caught has been quite impressive, I still wonder if Peter was expecting this result or if he was a bit skeptical. Millions of small Almaco Jack where ambushing the reefs. Even during the deadly tides you would manage one of them to bite the irons and I'm pretty sure that, because of the abundance of those smaller critters, we found it more difficult to hook serious contenders.

The big fish didn't participate too actively to the party. We hooked few of them but for a series of reason we only landed one, a 40lb Almaco jack. Thus, they are there, I don't have a single doubt about it, and for this reason I want to come back in May, when the summer starts and the migratory species are more likely to show up. Peter told me that the Yellowfin Tuna stay deep on the drop-offs, and that he can see them in the sounder. Quite a good change for a target fishing like ours: can't wait to get rid of the winter.

Bermuda was also a great lab for my photographic experiments and I have learnt few more things. The most important is that I don't have to clean the sensor myself, and the second that I need to buy a GOOD tripod.

You can see more images here http://www.caranx.net/bermuda_report_2008.htm

Painting with flash

Last week I was in Bermuda, what a beautiful island and incredible fishing ! It is also plentiful of photo opportunities, and I spent a lot of time behind the viewfinder of my D80. By the way, before my departure, I made the mistake of cleaning the sensor myself... I wish I have never done it ! Since I started working on the images I spent more time cleaning the photos rather than editing them.


Back to the photos, very close to shore there was a subject that caught my attention and I wanted to portrait in various manners, a wooden boat. Among the exposures I took, my favourite came out at night, slightly after dark. I put the camera on the tripod and choose an aperture of f8. I could have opened even more but I'm not too happy with the CCD results with the too long exposures (a lot of noise) and also, since it was just an experiment, I didn't want to keep waiting 15 minutes before closing the shutter. So 185sec was the right time, it came out after a couple of tests and I was happy with the way it looked. The Sigma 10-20 allowed me to place the camera very close to the boat and yet have a lot of background in the image. I also put the WB setting to Tungsten to achieve that deep blue sky, and since I was going to use the SB600 to paint my subject, I put a CTO gel to warm up the light and counterbalance that specific WB. During the time the shutter was opened I hopped around the boat flashing the light 1/64. I wish I could have excluded completely the grass to make the boat stand even further, but I couldn't. Next time.

The new Tropical fishing season is about to start

It truly is, in less than one month I will be hopping on the first airplane with the first group of costumers. Destination Bermuda, for an exploratory jigging trip, the first both for me and the costumers. I have always been curious about this spot. In the IGFA book of records there is a good deal of massive Amberjack caught in these waters and I wonder how our irons will behave. My friend Miguel, an excellent Portuguese fisherman, last year landed this massive Amberjack in Cape Verde, I'm showing here the photo for you to see what we are after in Bermuda... pretty ambitious guys uh ???

A Jig & a Wahoo, a recipe for disaster

Yes, I have caught this Wahoo on a jig but I wasn't jigging it, I casted it to a fish which boiled after a sardine

I have never caught a Wahoo on a jig. Never. Not a single one and I have hooked quite few many, probably more than I can count with all of my limb's fingers.

I can be fishing elbow to elbow with two or three fishing buddies, none of them using wire, neither myself. We land on top a pack of hungry 'Hoos, jigs dropping, reels reeling, rods wiggling. One strike, the friend on my left starts fighting a fish, I feel a nibble, maybe not even that and my jig is gone. My friend lands a fish, the hook is on the chin, away from the jaws, damn luck!

Situation nº 2. Me and my friend Mario in El Hierro island, Canary Archipelago. Our skipper finds a pack of hungry Wahoos. I am fishing with a 30 and a 50lb jigging rods, first without wire, then with a small piece. I hook 5 Wahoos in a row while Mario is looking at me in disbelief. I manage to loose each one of them because either they cut me off, snap the line or break the wire, due to a bad haywire twist.

The story doesn't end here.

Ascension island. Wahoo are not a pest but they are there and show up every once in a while. I'm fishing with 4 other guys. 3 of them hook and land a Wahoo without using wire, and when I decide that is my time for a try I put a lighter jig near a school of Bonitos where I saw some Wahoo sniffing around and drop it a bit up current. The small iron hit the water, line start coming off the reel at the usual pace and all of a sudden it is dead. Nothing comes out of the spool anymore. The jig is done, a Wahoo took it probably 5 meters below the surface on my very first specific "Wahoo cast" and cut the mono leader like butter.

I have similar stories at the Maldives, Panama, Costa Rica etc etc. In about one month I will be probably fishing Bermuda, a pretty new spot for jigging, quite an exciting experience. Is full of these toothed critters, and I know that my friends will sure land some. I don't know whether to bring a lot of wire, or a rabbit's leg, is a hard call. Doomed? Maybe, I'll let you know when I come back