Mid May, as the southwestern monsoon started to settled, our regular singaporean angler Su Lin informed me she will be in Sri Lanka in a couple of days and she wanted for one or two days fishing at sea. She wanted to do some light jigging and have a try on popping to catch her first GT. I told her the true regarding the weather forecast, but I promise her if we have a good windows we will go.


The day before her arrival, I send her an email with last weather forecast and I told her the only day we can go was on her arrival day... I knew she will arrive in the night at Colombo and she will need to wake up few hours after she arrive in her hotel. But Su Lin was so happy to go fishing, she just reply : "So, I will be waiting for you to pick me at my hotel tomorrow morning at 6 am. Thanks and see you in 12 hours".
So next morning at 7:30 am, Su Lin was doing her first cast of the day. At this stage of my report, I want to precise it was the first time Su Lin was doing some GT popping, meaning casting a 130 gr popper with heavy tackle. And to be honest, to do that after traveling from Singapore and just few sleeping hours, I was very impressed and as a captain, I really wanted she caught her first GT on popping because she was deserve it.
It's for that reason, I was more kind and patient than usual when her cast were not so good. I gave her my best tips to increase her casting distance and make sure her popper make enough noise to trigger a GT bite.
After a couple of hours of intensive cast, Su Lin has the first bite of the day and it seems to be a decent fish. She sets perfectly the hooks and the GT goes in a long rush. After a nice fight, I landed the first ever GT of Su Lin caught on popper and it was a decent 20 kg fish. Su Lin was thrilled and I feel she started to be hooked on GT popping and my feeling was confirmed by her following long distance casts.

On the next spot, she missed a shy bite, but I knew we need to wait for the tide change to found again some good activity. After lunch, I try again the spot where Su Lin caught her first GT, but nothing happen. On the next spot, as she finished retrieving her lure and was about to take it out of the water, a GT appear from nowhere and grabbed her popper. Fortunately it was not a monster fish, otherwise in this condition the end is not in the favour of the angler. Sun Lin manage well and landed her GT, not a big one, but what a bite !!! We try for a while in some deep water spots where I spotted lot of baits on the sonar, but sadly GT's where not there or did not want to play with us. On the way back I make a last drift on a good spot and I spotted some baits in surface which seem to be afraid by a predator. I ask Su Lin to cast in there direction and on the second pop, a big GT grabbed her lure in a big swirl. Su Lin was ready for this fish and strike perfectly to make sure the hooks penetrate well in the solid jaw of this big fish. But the fish was strong, maybe a bit too strong for her, she cannot put enough pressure on the GT who found the reef and broke the leader. What a pity... Anyway Su Lin was really happy of her day at sea and promised me to come back next season to have her revenge with the big GT.
As usual, it was a pleasure to have you onboard Su-Lin and I really want to congratulate you for your catch you really deserve it !!! See you soon ;-)
Capt. Nico