Not much Guinness, lots of Sea Bass

The only Guinness beer we saw was canned Guinness, freshly bought from a local supermarket together with a couple of bottles of wine to irrigate our dinner. There was no time for bars, Irish pubs or parties. Only fishing, fishing and a little bit more of fishing.

Three crazy guys came with me to this exploratory trip to the deep Irish south west. Galway, a paradise for sea bass, protected by strict laws enforced by the government. Fish that grow for the exclusive pleasure of recreational fisherman, without the use and abuse of the trade. In a country like Ireland where the money is not plentiful and the crisis is hammering hard, this is a real impressive result. The recreational fishermen are only entitled to two pieces per day and no nets, gillnets, trawls and long lines are affecting the stock.

So the hopes were high. The reports from friends who had been there previously were amazing and it was already time to park the heavy duty tackle for some lighter outfit. Oriol, Thomas and Mario were the lucky ones who shared with me these 4 intense, fruitful and enjoyable days. John was our guide and Lynn, his wife, tireless cook, terribly frightened by the amount of food the Spanish-Italian team could gobble each day.

After about two and a half hours drive from Shannon Airport and a flat tire, we were able to reach the cottage. A quick bite to calm the restless stomachs and after rigging the tackle we could finally go fishing. The first day was a little poor, with a couple of bass and one or two more bites. A good dinner and a deserved rest were needed to prepare the tired bodies for the next day, with a scary wake up call at 04:30 in the morning.

On our first full day of fishing, even arriving at dawn at the spot and despite of the efforts of the guide, the fish were still not participating. However, Oriol managed to land the largest piece of the week, but the team is far from being happy yet.

It was just the second full day of fishing that things began to cheer up. There were moments of frantic activity followed by sudden stops, all this due to the tides and the food that would concentrate or spread the fish. But we were staring seeing numbers at least. The double digits that my friends anticipated me before my trip were not a lie or a fisherman’s exaggeration, and the Irish Bass proved us that they can be very aggressive and fierce predators.

Fishing was mainly either on the surface with walking the dogs, or an inch below the water with soft plastics, especially Fin-S and the Super Fluke, basically because they were the only ones we had. I found a dog that worked wonderfully in a foggy morning. Could cast it where others failed and obviously had an action that our finned ladies liked very much. Climbed to the highest step of the podium and every minute his stock value was moving faster that the rate of oil.

There are plenty of Pollocks too. Unfortunately the photos I have are so pathetic that I will not dare to show them. Thus I do remember the panic of climbing up and down those high and steep cliffs under which where they live. It was scary. Fearful. Hopefully next time they will not see me wearing long neoprene waders with felt soles, thus I will be scared again, no shame to admit it.

I fished with two 7-foot Lamiglas travel rods which have worked wonderfully. The old series of Lamiglas Travel was quite bad but these have shown great qualities, both in casting and working the lures, exceeding the 8-foot rods that my friends were using. One is spinning, the XTC 704 able to toss lures up to 3/4oz and the other is the casting model XTC7025 with a lure rating up to 1 1/2oz. On the first one I put a reel a tad too big for it, the Certate 3500 Custom and on the second a Team Daiwa Luna 253, bait casting, which is a little gem. Tuf Line 20lb with 20/30lb leaders. Lures of the like of Spit'n Image, GunFish, Sammy, High Roller, and the vinyl discussed above.

I’ll close this post with the negative side of the trip. During a photo session on the shoreline, three flashes mounted on a Lastolite Tri-Flash and a Manfrotto 001 Stand decided to take a swim and got as fried as the eggs we would eat in the morning. After a couple of hours I slipped on a rock and the Nikon D80 with the Sigma 10-20 drunk a good pint of water and stopped working. Finally, the joke had cost me more than most expensive trip to the tropics and I only managed to keep working thanks to the old D70s and 18-200, a lens that I don’t love too much and no speedlights available to lit up a bit the images.

Yet I came back from Ireland happy. I made peace with the soft plastics, I returned to see a country I love a lot, and I fished light tackle, which ultimately gives me great satisfaction. To be 100% satisfied I need the camera and lens to survive the dive, I’ll know it in few days.

Maldives, an image or two

I haven't wrote that much about my latest trip to the Maldives. It has been OK. Nothing spectacular but we had some decent jigging and nice popping as well.

Few images for you of this November's Safari, I will be back there in February and I hope I will have more stuff to show

This is my friend Albert showing a decent size Barracuda caught on a jig. The fish pulled hard and fooled me into thinking it was another beast. At the beginning we all said "Doogtooth" because the drag was screaming pretty loud and the line running fast, but the lack of stamina of the fish put our hopes down a bit. A nice fish nevertheless. Many people hate Barracuda and I think they're quite good fun critters

Eugeni in a tough situation, A GT took his lure and is heading back o the reef. The heavy drag settings are very tricky to use, especially when there's no gunwale to support your knees.

Snappers are always among my favourite fish to shoot. Then storm helped creating a bit more of atmosphere.

A bit of hard work near sunset. A small atoll in the distance reminds us we are in the Indian ocean, at the Maldives.

Another snapper in daylight. The red color in contrast with the blue sky really makes for a dramatic contrast. There's a main light on camera right, a Nikon SB600. I exposed for the sky and the flash filled the subject probably at 1/4 of power

The local band playing at night, around the campfire in a desert island

Dolphins feeding frenzy, what a show!

This week-end I was in Puerto Banús, near Marbella, Andalusia. There was a big event taking place, the XII international trolling tournament "Copa Principe de Asturias". I was there mainly to give a speech about jigging, a technique that is pretty much in fashion lately, and to cover the event for the publishing group I work for. I'm not a big fan of Fishing Tournaments but I must admit that the one in Puerto Banús is pretty much unique but I'll talk about it in another post. On Saturday I was on board the Bormar VI, one of the boats competing for the tournament. Fishing was pretty slow for us but on the way back we found this amazing sight.
There were various schools of Dolphins working the bait and feeding furiously together with the birds. The strategy was pretty wild; the mammals would slam the balls of bait with their tails to stun them, and afterwards eat at an easy pace. We thought that Tunas might be feeding with the Dolphins but there was no presence of fish whatsoever, thus we spent quite some time just enjoining the show.

GT from shore...kid me not!

I have been fishing the tropics for about 20 years now and one of the finest memory I have is the day I landed my first GT from shore. This happened some 3 years ago, faaaaar away from home, in Australia. Thanks to the courtesy of Damon Olsen, the owner of Nomad Sport Fishing (http://www.nomadsportfishing.com.au/), I had the chance to join my friend Bertrand "Frencho" Picarda and a group of "crazy" Japanese to a trip to Kenn reef, in the Coral Sea 300 miles away from the nearest Ozzie beach.

After British Airways had lost both my luggage and rod case, here I am, with my plastic bag full of stuff I had to buy to survive my week offshore, a borrowed popping rod from Bertrand and a borrowed jigging rod from Neil, at Neil's tackle in Brisbane. I had my reels, that was pretty cool, they where in my backpack, and I had my Nikon, in my hand luggage as well.

Late in the afternoon we boarded the Odyssey, the 75ft aluminum mother vessel together with the Japanese friend and off we went for a 36 hours cruise to the lost reef.

During the week of fishing I have seen two of the biggest GT I ever saw, landed by Bertrand and Hippo, one of the Japs. The reef where alive and teeming with life, the GTs huge and the surrounding waters full of Tunas, Wahoo and Sharks. Whenever you saw a feeding frenzy with birds diving all over the place, you would run with the skiff there and have plenty of sashimi in a blink of an eye. Imagine a large reef, so far away from shore where commercial fishing is not only prohibited, but also enforced. During our stay we had few times the airplanes of the Ozzie Navy patrolling the area to see who we where and what where we doing. Magic!

Well, to make a long story short, in the 4 days we spent at Kenn reef I had the time to make friends with Mogi-san, one of the gurus of Japanese jigging, Kenji Konishi, the creator of the Carpenter brand of rods and lures, and learn a trick or two about GT fishing. But it has been the very last day, just before departure, that I saw the light. The skiff dropped us on a strip of sand surrounded by reefs, once shallow but now at high tide plenty of water for the predators to swim in it. We started casting hoping to see a sign of life and I had a Green Jobfish following the stick bait on the second or third cast. A beautifully painted Coral trout followed and after a short struggle I managed to land it. It was then time for a GT to attack my Big Foot stick bait, not a big guy but who damn cares, it was my first GT ever landed from shore and was worth its weight in gold. One of the Japs soon followed and then Kenji landed his as well, you can see in the vertical image. Is hard to try to explain how exciting is to catch one of the strongest and largest predator (thus none of ours were spectacular, fish up to 30kg have been landed from shore) with your feet solidly attached to mother earth. No vessel pulling, no skipper motoring, no drift dragging. Just you, yourself and the critter. Each and everyone doing his best to survive.

I fish too much from boats nowadays but is well sculptured in my mind the memory of each and every fish I have caught from shore. This is where you can see the difference between a man and a kid, I kid you not!

Thanks again Damon and every one in the trip. I had to borrow stuff from many of you and will always be grateful. Hope to see you again soon.