Yesterday I returned from a fishing trip to a truly memorable destination, the Pacific country of Kiribati.

Until booking the trip mid way through last year, I actually didn't know that Kiribati existed, however after reading a report written by Duncan of Fish Head about a trip he had been on recently, and hearing that he may have spots available for a further trip in Feb, I signed myself up.

Getting to Kiribati is a bit of a mission from Perth with 3 flights required each way, and my trip home involving a gruelling 31hrs in transit. The remoteness of the place, and the fact that most of my usual fishing mates had also never heard of the country, resulted in me flying solo on this trip with Duncan plus 6 other guys who I'd not previously met making up the balance of the 8 man crew. This all worked well, and as always, it was great to meet and fish with some new guys.

Despite being pretty tired on arrival (at least partly due to us having knocked off a litre of local Rum during our stopover in Fiji), we were keen to get into some fishing as soon as we landed.

We checked into our lodge (which, as you can see from the view from the breakfast table below was about as waterfront as you can get), and readied the tackle.

Upon arriving at the water, we saw the two boats that were to be our fishing platforms for the week, a fibreglass centreconsole, and a traditional outrigger canoe. The outrigger canoe (despite being slow) made a great casting platform, and some great fish were landed from it over the week.

We had a mix of keen fly fishermen wanting to chase bonefish, as well as some offshore enthusiasts. This mix worked really well, as with some of the anglers spending a lot of time casting from the flats, the boats were never crowded.

The pics and captures listed below are mine only - whilst great fish were caught by all, I will leave it to the others to post catch reports and pics of their fish on this and other sites if they choose, and expect that Duncan will also do a full writeup after finishing the second week of fishing on his E-Mag The Tight Line

DAY 1

On the first day of fishing I went out in the glass boat to focus on popping and jigging. Though still getting warmed up and not having a full day after having flown in during the morning, I boated 4 smallish GTs (missing several more), a red bass and some dirty barracudas on popper, with one such dirty barracuda stealing my 3 cast old Craft Bait. This was to be the first in a series of many tackle sacrifices for the week (at least excess baggage charges were not a problem on the way home!). The jigging was good too, with a Yellowfin Tuna of around 8kg, solid coronation trout and some great long nose emperor hitting my jigs.

DAY 2

Day 2 we ventured much further around the island to hit up some different ground and had a much better session. Im not sure how many GTs we landed for the boat, but I got 6 to the boat that day (including a couple of better fish than the previous day), with lots of pack attacks happening. We then switched to the jigs for some deeper water jigging, and I got a couple of nice Jobfish, my PM red bass (no pic unfortunaty), my first Almaco Jack, small YFT, plus heaps of other reefies incl Coronation trout and Longnose.
Considering we were fishing without any sounder in around 80-100m of water, the bite was really pretty insane on the jigs that day (the best for the trip I think). Heaps of great fish landed by the others that day also. On the way home we stopped at one last spot to throw a few poppers and an absolute barrel of a Tuna lept completely out of the water for mine. Didnt hook up, but probably lucky that it didnt, or a spooling all but guaranteed.

DAY 3

Light tackle day for a bit of a break on the third day. Was fishing a 100gr jig rod and a PE3 caster casting for small GTs, several trout (including this vibrant black/purple one), red bass on small stick bait, coronation trout etc.

DAY 4

Much slower day today. Landed 3 GTs from 4 strikes, but then the topwater shut down. Spent a bit of time jigging around a bait ball and got my first rainbow runner (my first) and a small GT, then jigged deeper for a decent cod and some other reefies.

A selection of the days gear below.

DAY 5
Another light tackle day much like day 3, no real notable captures for me but did get monstered trolling a metal slice on the way home.

DAY 6

The plan for day 6 was to hit the northern parts of the island which (due to the wind and swell direction) dont get as much attention. Unfortunately, the wind and swell had other ideas.

We still made an attempt to get there though and trolled a couple of small YFT on the way, with me getting my big Richter skirt snipped off at the swivel by a wahoo also. The waves and surface chop were rubbish for popping, and only one fish was raised with none hooked. We had a great session on the light jigs though with me landing a great coronation, jobfish, plus many other reefies all on a 100gr rod which was fun (but dangerous to the already depleted stock of jigs).

Landed a pretty solid shark that hit my Andaman jig on the drop. Was interesting bringing him up into the front of the dugout canoe!

DAY 7

What a difference a day can make.

Day 7 was the last day for 4 of us, so we decided to hit the distant destination that we hit on the second day for another shot at some GTs and Tuna. The day panned out exactly as hoped, and was a great end to the trip. On the way to the spot that came to be known as the Happy Spot, we noticed some birds working on the surface and decided to stop to have a cast or two with the poppers. We were glad we did.
Immediately we were on with a triple hookup of Yellowfin Tuna. Two of the blokes got their small model YFTs in pretty quick, and then began giving me grief about taking forever to get mine in, but it was a bloody solid fish! Ended up landing this 40kg+ YFT on an 8ft popper rod, that was incredibly hard work. Only had a standard 10,000 spool on the reel with JB 100lb, so didnt have much capacity, meaning I had to fish max drag for the whole fight (came close to going in the drink a couple times!). Saw the bottom of the spool a few times but got there in the end.

We then carried on to our original destination and were greated by the hottest GT bite Ive seen. Double and triple hookups were pretty common, with most casts yielding a fish. Im not sure how many we boated, but I got at least 12, possibly more than 15 to the boat, with the other guys doing really well also. Could have caught plenty more, but needed a break so went off to jig for a bit before the long motor home.

Unfortunately there were no horse GTs landed, but a couple were seen, and Ill definitely be back for them.

All in all it was a solid trip with the slow days you expect on any trip, but also some extremely hot action that will definitely get me back there. Thanks Duncan for organising a great trip, and a great bunch of guys to get out there with!

Dan

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