Back in December myself, Tim (aka Tim VB), John (aka JoRn) and Dale (aka Wydra) did a lodge based trip with Ocean Blue in Vanuatu.

Shortly before the trip I found out I'd be moving to London immediately after the trip was over and so this was to be my farewell trip, so was certainly more than ready for a few casts!

The trip which we booked was 6 days based out of the Trees and Fishes lodge. In contrast to my Eiao trip 6 weeks prior, this trip was certainly far more luxurious - fishing off the excellent 32ft Edgewater and returning home each night to 3 course meals and more Tusker (beer) wine and spirits than you could poke a stick at.

As with many people fishing this trip, our target was doggies and GTs. We didnt get large numbers of either, but the fish were present and we certainly missed more chances than we converted with at least a couple of very serious dogtooth being lost (including one that absolutely took me to school on a Carpenter Monster Hunter 80H, Stella 18K and PE10).

Between us we landed 8-10 doggies and a similar number of GTs (including a good one for Dale on popper) as well as red bass, coral trout, jobfish, yellowfin, reefies and more Whalers than ideal - including one which won Tim the much coveted title of 'Whaler Master 2013' - a title which he's told me he hopes to vigorously defend in Oman later this year.

The trip was now over a month ago and my memory is a little hazy (probably in no small part due to the surplus of Tusker cartons that we brought on our first day) but some highlights for me included:

1. the couple of brief windows when the doggies were really 'on', which usually resulted in multiple simultaneous hookups followed by multiple simultaneous bust offs;
2. taking out the combined whisky drinking and night time kayak fishing challenge, by landing some mysterious emperor looking thing in around 50m of water on a kayak with no torch one night (not recommended);
3. a couple of great sessions catching rat Yellowfin tuna on PE3 casting gear, including where a big Sailfish swam up to the boat, was hooked by the skipper on John's popping gear and then won its freedom; and
4. the look of pain on Tim's face when the leader slipped out of the deckie's hand while still attached to the massive whaler he'd just battled up from 140m of water, which then proceeded to saunter back to the bottom under full drag - much to the delight of all aboard (other than Tim).

I'll let the pics do the rest of the talking - but all in all it was a fun, professionally run trip with a great skipper, excellent boat and fantastic facilities and I'd certainly consider one of the Ocean Blue liveaboard trips in the future.

Dan

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