The long awaited trip to Sette Cama rolled in early March...
The 9wt GLoomis NRX with a 3tant T90, 10wt TFO TiCR with Shilton SL6 and the 12wt Gloomis NRX with the Hatch 9 were packed along with a few spinning rods in anticipation to do battle.
Gabon is an absolute stunning place with friendly people... (wish I knew French)
Easy flight with SAA from Jhb to Libreville with a rest day at Libreville that gave me time to edit some of the resent photo safari and explore the beach around the Tropicana Hotel.
The rest of the group from Britain arrived that evening and the following morning early we were on the way to the airport for two internal flights... 1st to Port Gentil and then the 2nd flight to Gamba mostly these flights were over forest and estuaries.
These form part of the 2nd biggest rainforest in the world.
At Gamba we were met by Eric and the guys ready to fly out after a week of hard fishing...
We had an hour on the boats to reach the camp and it we could not get enough of the scenery on this huge expanse of a lagoon.
Mark met us at the camp, gave a brief intro on the camp got us settled in and then it was straight into the serious stuff of getting rods and tackle ready for the 1st fishing session of the beach late afternoon/evening.
The beach / surf session were done late afternoon and evening - determined by the tides - the surf was not to bad although the guys from Britain got rolled a bunch of times.
The surf sessions were spinning sessions using the Blackhole Cape Cod 10,6 h rod paired with the Stella 14k loaded with PE6 casting braid.
Lures used were sinking stickbaits in the 80-100g range that is worked extremely slowly on the bottom... (something totally opposite from the east coast and GT fishing)
Jacks were targeted with spoons late afternoon till sunset and then switched to stickbaits.
Although it was middle of the rainy season Sette Cama had almost no rain for the 3 weeks previous to our visit and this influenced the fishing negatively resulting that you had to work hard for the fish and convert hits into landed fish as much as possible.
For me this meant 1 hit a session standing waist deep in the surf spinning. The Cubera Snappers in the photo above were the results...
The Cubera Snapper has a healthy population around Sette Cama with 12 fish landed over 40kg this season.
The African Threadfin did not play ball but I did managed to get one in the primary school class ...
For the morning sessions we were fishing the lagoon with the dropping tide with Longfin Jacks as our primary target...
I took a light spinning rod along but the fly rods won very quickly as I started casting the 10wt on the 1st morning...
Sessions averaged from 6:00-9:00 every morning as the Jacks stopped feeding at around 9:00
The result for the 1st morning
As good size Longfin Jack decided to hit the fly and gave me a good ref on the 10wt...
That set the tone for the rest of the morning sessions...
The 2nd last morning Mark and I went out alone to just do flyfishing from the boat... difficult to have another angler at the back spinning lures while a you are trying to get a fish on fly... the spinning angler will get most if not all the fish...
Anyway the Jacks were in a feeding mood hitting the bait fish so hard that they actually beach themselves to try and get away from the marauding Jacks...
1st Jack on popper with the 9wt and we were having a supper fight but I placed too much pressure...
Quick with another popper and the morning resulted in a lot of fun with the 9wt and 5 fish landed...
Last morning started promising with a fish early but the hook pulled during the fight...
Then as if the switch were tripped the Jacks went silent with just few swirls below the popper...
Around 8:00 switched to the 10wt with intermediate line and a Clouser's minnow to fish deeper...
Close to 8:40 and still nothing with just a few casts remaining and a Jack hit the fly at the boat just as I was busy lifting the fly to do another cast...
The fish ran me into the backing gave a good account of itself...
This was also the last fish for me on the trip.
Fishing from the beach and sharing it with Forest Elephant bulls are a unique experience...
I did cast the 12wt on the South beach at night during the low tide. Interesting to do it in the dark.
Did not see any tarpon during the week but I think this was because of the rains.
I am already planning to return and go and do battle with those strong fighting fish of Sette Cama....
Tourettefishing has a super setup and I can recommend fishing with them!
