Lazarus banks September 2017 Report

[Dewald Posthumus]

Hi guys,
Just returned from our trip to St Lazarus banks with Island  Adventure Charters with Captain Brent. Here is a short trip report – trying to  type with land-sickness is not the easiest thing, but here goes:


It was a first time trip for me and it turned out to be one  of the most memorable experiences of my life. After months of preparing,  visiting tackle stores, and buying second hand tackle from the guys on this  forum as well as the ‘other’ forum, importing stuff from China and finally  building my own poppers, the day finally arrived to depart on this epic fishing  trip. We organized a shuttle service and got on our way to O.R Tambo just  before 6 am on Thursday morning. Check in all our equipment and managed to make  the check in weight by a mere 3 kg. That is almost 180kg of fishing tackle, and  we carried unrigged poppers in our hand luggage! Anyway, on with the trip, the  flight to Maputo is a short one of just under an hour, stamped our passports  and the flight to Pemba was delayed by half an hour, no communication,  announcements or anything. Needless to say, we kept on checking with staff as there  is only one flight per week to Pemba, we did not want to miss it, anyway, we  made it onto the flight and off we went.


Arrived in Pemba just before 2pm and we were met by Brent  and his crew, loaded all the tackle into Brent’s car and off to Nautilus for a  quick beer whilst the loading all the tackle onto the boat. To cut a long story  short, we had some headwind and big swells on the way to St Lazarus and only  arrived on the banks at around 10am the next morning. I was completely stuffed  and was seasick. Slept most the way there and spent a lot of time in the cabin  sleeping the first day. The guys managed some wahoos and tunas on the first  day, I was out of it, so cannot really recall what happened. The days that  followed were absolute mayhem, from trawling to spinning to jigging to popping  and plugging.

[Dewald Posthumus]

We managed to land some real bus wahoo’s, the biggest one  was 21 kg, followed by some of 20kg, all the way down to around 5kg.

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We cracked the code on plugging for Tuna on GT ice creams  and landed quite a couple, the biggest tuna of 31kg landed by Nico (he had a  black hole 10’6” rod made by Brandon McQueen), he had quite a tussle with that  fish, pulling a tuna with such a long rod is a real mission. Other tuna include  a 25kg specimen and a 22kg one. I had the worst record with them and have a  record of 13-0 for the tuna’s. For some reason I just could not get hooked up.  I had 13 smashes/ takes/ on-off’s on a needle nose GT Ice cream…such a shame..  You need to understand that battling these sized tunas on popping tackle was no  easy feat and all that got hooked into the 20kg + specimens chose to do it only  once! He he.
All these were on GT Ice creams

[Dewald Posthumus]

I shared the results of building my own poppers in the DIY  Lures section earlier this year and I am very chuffed to say that we managed  excellent results on the home made poppers that I specifically made for this  trip. The lighter colours seemed to work well, but that being said, we managed  a GT on a black popper in the middle of the day as well.

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Some more GT

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I even managed a white tip reef shark on a popper – at first  I just saw the tail fin on the take and thought it was a monster GT, but after  a couple of minutes into the fight, it surfaced some way out and I knew it was  something different than a GT, turned out to be a 20kg odd shark, still a nice  fight.

[Dewald Posthumus]

The GT’s were a bit disappointing as we were expecting  bigger fish, most of the fish were in the 80-90cm range, with only one of 108cm  begin landed – the tunas did make up for it, but still, would have liked the GT’s  a bit bigger.
We also managed a sailie on jig the first afternoon, quite  an epic encounter with the fish fighting close to the boat and putting up a  good aerial display.
We managed to hook another sailie on the second day – again,  on one of my home made poppers – but it did not stick and came off after the  initial run and first jump.

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And I almost forgot about the doggies, we managed 4 dogtooth tuna's, all in the 18-20kg range, only one on jig, the rest on trawling.

[Dewald Posthumus]

All in all, it was a trip to remember, good fish, good  eating, good company, lots of beers and a really good time – we were always  into fish, whether we were trawling, popping, jigging or plugging.
For those of you thinking about going, DO IT!
You can find more info and pictures/ video’s on the Facebook  page: https://www.facebook.com/islandcharters.co.za/
Please mind the language on some of the videos and look out for  the one on the double up with GT’s, again, both on home made poppers!

[WalkersKiller]

Superb report Dewald, thanks for posting this! 

[REEFMAN]

Ya agree, awesome report and some great fish! Well done, especially on the home-made poppers!!! 

[Cage]

Thanks for sharing , the tuna on plug is great, we had the same a couple years back.... even better to see your poppers produce the goods Dewalt!

[ianf]

Great report. Makes us land bound JHB'ers quite jealous!!

[FishStyx]

Fantastic bud... 108cm worth of Geet is no slouch... That's a good fish. Sounds like you had a blast. We've got just a few more sleeps till we head off there to go and tax Brent.


So glad the poppers worked well... Is that tarbender full of teeth marks now? 



Must say, 10'6" worth of popping rod on a boat is quite long. Lekker for shore based game fishing but a helluva task for the boat.


Thanks for the report 

[CRANKMAN]

Great report, thanks. Sounds like an excellent time had by all. I saw a few tired anglers in Brent's FB posts yesterday 
Your weather looked stunning. We are hoping for the same in a few days time.
How were the currents for jigging?
Were you trolling and jigging with wire trace?
 

[yakuza]

Awesomeness!!!!!!! Great report!

[Dewald Posthumus]

The currents were ripping at 2 knots for the first couple of days, then settled down. The weather held up great, we had some windy days, but not that bad, day two was an absolute gem, almost windless and the sea was very flat. We found the doggie in 20m water, both on trawl and on jig - the one on jig was very close to the mooring buoys. Just to the north of mooring spot there was plenty of sailie action and a bit further off is where we found the tunas, plenty of them, what we would do is to trawl and when we got hookups, we would cast the 4oz GT Ice Creams, it worked a charm.


We jigged without wire and got bitten off on three occasions on the drop, dropshot also worked well, we also got bitten off quite a lot. A light outfit with a small Couta casting spoon worked well for Bonnies adn wahoo - I got smashed by a huge wahoo on a 9ft rod and Stradic 5k, broke me off in a second. My brother was the most successful fisherman of the trip and he just stuck to his recipe for fishing, a simple 3x3 method. Pop for three casts, the jig for three drops then cast out dropshot for three casts. He was on more often than not.



The GT's were all around the fusiliers, the video where we have a double up you will see that we cast into a shoal of fusiliers and then pop through them, that enticed the take. the jigging was slow and with the exception of a sailie and a doggie on jig, here was nothing to write home about.


Got these two on 50lb jigging outfit as well which was a nice fight.


And then the final fish on the way off the banks was a 34kg tuna on trawl - Brent asked a normal guy to sit next to me to give it perspective (at 2.03m and 145kg the fish looks small next to my frame!)

[FishStyx]

The currents were ripping at 2 knots for the first couple of days, then settled down.

I stand to be corrected but our trip to Laz, we were whacked with a current of 5-6 kts... It was harsh. We had rappies out at anchor 

[CRANKMAN]

The currents were ripping at 2 knots for the first couple of days, then settled down.

I stand to be corrected but our trip to Laz, we were whacked with a current of 5-6 kts... It was harsh. We had rappies out at anchor 

And it was still a bit fast for them 

[peterblace]

great report...thanks for sharing...awesome catches