Few days after the trip with the Japanese, I have a popping day charter with Alex from France and Sergii from Ukraine, both of them were traveling in Sri Lanka for holidays and who planned a day fishing to target GT's on popper.
I met the guys at the harbour, Alex had already experienced Gt fishing in Andaman Island some years ago and it was the first time for Sergii. I spent a couple of minute to give good advice to the guys to put them in the best situation to catch a GT. We start the day in some of good spots, but as I don't see any good activity, I decide to try some others spots I don't fish often but I know they can produce good fish. On the first spot Alex have a nice bite, the GT bust his popper 3 times but Alex don't set the hook properly and miss the fish. On the second spot Alex invite me to join them and end of the drift I also missed a GT as I was not focus on my lure (beginner mistake...) On the other spot, I missed another one very close to the boat (not my day...) and Alex caught a decent fish who gave him an epic fight on his light tackle (PE 5).
Sergii was not feeling so well with the sun heat and start to have an headache, certainly due to beginning of a dehydration, I advice him to take a rest and to drink a lot of water and I gave him some rehydration powder to help. Despite his headache, Sergii keep casting and his efforts were rewarded by a big GT who grab his popper. As Sergii told us, he was definitely not ready for that fish as this GT fight so hard, but all in all Sergii found some enough stamina to landed the fish. Congratulations Sergii !!! You deserve that fish.
As Sergii was not feeling better we decide to finish the day with a bit of trolling with the hope to catch a nice king mackerel or a sailfish as the sea conditions were good, but sadly fish were not keen to play with us. Never mind, as the target of the day was to catch some Gt's and mission was accomplished with a big bonus fish for Sergii.
Tight Lines
Capt. Nico
