Nicholas, Thierry and Thierry’s wife Ghislaine arrived in the Musandam for a few days fishing earlier in the week. After a quick introduction and a double take over Nicholas’s Irish accent and Thierry and Ghislaine French we settled down to the business of sorted out tackle and the game plan for the days ahead.
According to the internet the weather was looking a bit all over the place with the wind swopping direction and speed on an hourly basis but we decided to take things on day by day. The first day started a bit slow and frustrating with strong winds and difficult conditions. We got off to a quick start when Nicholas landed a Big eye trevally but then things slowed down. By ten AM I could see a bit of doubt in the crew’s eyes but that soon changed on our first drift past Popper Rock when Thierry was slammed by a fish on a small stickbait, he was fishing a one of his lighter rods with a classic Stella 14000 which was screaming like a banshee with an angry fish on the end.
A while later to my surprise we had a nice Yellowfin Tuna of 21 kilo’s on the deck of the boat not the first species I would have expected to catch on a GT drift! Once again the Musandam throws a curve ball an d takes everyone by surprise you have to love this place.
Nicholas with the first fish of the trip
Yellowfin!
After breaking for lunch we travelled to the next spot on the way I noticed some birds in action so we went to have a look expecting more tuna instead we found a school of sailfish feeding on the surface lit up like neon tubes we proceed to throw everything we had at them but they just weren’t interested so we all agreed how lucky we were to see such an amazing sight while muttering under our breath about how we’d nail the buggers next time.
We ended off the day getting stuck into the big eye that were blitzing around white rock and landing the first GT of the trip on light tackle before heading home
The following day we headed out and it was Ghislaine who got the show on the road with a jigging rod her first hit on jig ended quickly when she got reefed but she was soon back in action with a solid hit, at first the fish didn’t put up much of a fight but all of a sudden Ghislaine was bent over the gunnel shouting blue merde with her Trevella jigging rod bent double. Nicholas leapt into action and grabbed her belt and she settled into a tough fight credit has to be given to Ghislaine who gave no quarter and never asked for any help we soon had a nice GT of 123cm on the boat an awesome start to the day and an amazing fish to land on a light rod like the Trevella.
We moved onto the next spot and again it was Ghislaine who was onto the fish this time a nice Kingfish. We kept fishing getting smacked left right and center by the kingfish on jig and stickbait but couldn’t stay connected and after feeding the ocean a serious amount of lead and wood and missing a few fish we finally had a solid GT hit on Theirry’s setup another nice fish of 110 cm. The Most surprising fish of the day was a pennant trevally caught by Nicholas on jig I’ve caught small ones back home in SA but this was the first time I’ve seen one in a mother of pearl finish a little fugly but a cool fish to add to your species count.
Ghislaine showing the boys how it’s done
Over the next to days we had rough weather conditions which limited our fishing but we still managed to boat a few more fish but I think we’d all agree that the second day was the highlight the guys were already planning their next trip out to the Musandam later this year and we look forward to seeing them again!
