Many years in the making this fish, not the exact one I've been chasing but still over the moon!

This one happened about a week into a trip and over 100NM off southern Fiji with Jaga Crossingham, making my fifth trip over there chasing the big ones! This day started with an early morning session at a Dogtooth Tuna haunt, which ended up being far more productive for oversized spanish instead this day, always good to know your fish tax to the local village is sorted early in the day. Following that we continued the daily pattern of filling in the less fishy part of the day by putting the lures out and trawling some of the current side reef edges for wahoo and saily's, we put a few smaller wahoo in the boat and decided we were getting enough hook ups that it would be worth jumping in and seeing if there were any big ones amongst the school.

Matt and I were first to jump in and have a look around hanging off the reef in around 100m of water waiting for something to come through, we didn’t have flashers in the water so relied on the likelihood that the fish would be curious enough to have a look at us. Sure enough about ten minutes into the drift I see the first fish in the school sneaking behind my dive buddy Matt for a look, knowing that the fish were here I frisbeed a double sided CD out in front of me and ignored the school for ten seconds or so making sure not to make any eye contact or quick movements. I looked back and could see the biggest fish of the school coming aggressively towards the now flashing CD and decided it was a good time to approach as it wasnt focusing on me, a small dive to about 5m saw the fish come right between me and the CD allowing me to put an easy shot into the back third of the fish where all the tougher flesh is. Giving me plenty of confidence that it would hold!

From there the fish took off with my float for about 15 minutes and Matt and I had to eventually get picked up by the boat as we were miles behind the fish at this stage. The guys in the boat were excited with Jaga saying he had been following the floats which were doing 8 knots next to the boat for the last ten minutes. Matt and I jumped back in a took a more rushed approach to getting the fish into our hands as the sharks were starting to get heated and keen for a meal! A Second shot by Matt at around twenty metres and we could confidently drag it to the surface! A few hi-fives and screams in the water and jumped on the boat for a photo!

Fish got weighed to satisfy my own curiosity, but I always find it much more fun to let others speculate and guess. Considering writing a full trip report at some stage soon, but its a start. 

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