When Rick accepted my invitation to come to Cairns chasing Grander Black Marlin, he inevitably asked me what fishing gear he should bring. I said nothing, as I had the heavy tackle under control.

Rick is a serious tackle rat and I knew he would be itching to bring something along with him to try out. He spends his free time trolling ebay buying up collections of rods and reels and vintage lures, so he has a lot of tackle to choose from. In fact he has a very serious tackle collection proudly on display at his home.

When he arrived and started unpacking his gear and I was pretty surprised when he pulled out what looked like a couple of toy fishing rods. Given we were chasing giant marlin it certainly looked like Rick had brought a pen knife to a gun fight.

I was informed when I started to comment about how the gear looked like it had come out of Japanese cartoon, that these where indeed Storm Gomoku micro jigging rods and they were the latest rage in this type of fishing. After I got over the cartoon like qualities and colours it was not hard to be impressed by the very fine guides, obvious quality and general feel of the rods. The Micro jigs he had with him were 30 - 50 grams.

So we cooked up a plan to test them out during lunch in between trolling.

Travelling from the drop off to Linden bank I was watching the sea floor rise up on the sounder and was noting the potential sea life and schools of fish sitting on the reef. We had decided that we would find a good patch of fish and drift over them. Rick and Travis would Jig using the Gomoku gear and Steve would use standard bottom bouncing gear to see if he could pick up something edible. At about 40m there was a big patch of fish so I circled around and set the boat up to drift over it.

I grabbed out everyone’s lunch and prepared for what I thought would be a slow 30 minutes watching Rick jigging away to no avail. To my surprise he hooked up almost straight away, the rod buckled over and 30lb braid started stripping off the line. In the end after a tough battle approximately 2kg Coral Trout hit the surface. We pulled it in measured it and decided it was legal size and a keeper.



Rick and His first jigged Coral Trout

Very soon afterwards Travis was on as well. He also had a great fight before also getting a Trout on the board. I looked at the sounder and we had moved off the fish, so we repositioned and had another go.



Travis Hits the big time with a brightly coloured model and the Gomoku Rod in the back ground



Rick and another nice Coral Trout

Steve had opted for a more traditional bottom bouncing rig consisting of a 15kg rod and overhead reel, 50lb braid and 10oz sinker.



Steve Loaded for Bear with the traditional Bottom Bouncing Gear



Rick with another fish on the board - this time a Rosy Job Fish

The fight the relatively small fish gave the anglers on the light gear was a lot of fun and they took some convincing that we should get back to chasing Marlin.

It was not all beer and skittles as getting the fish in was a challenge on the light gear, made more difficult if the Men in the Grey Suits turned up and collected the reef tax. A few fish were sharked and the jigs sometimes got caught on the reef taking some drastic maneuvering of the boat to get them free.

I was surprised at how well jigging went for the reef species and in particular for Coral Trout. It had the positive affect of breaking up the long day and the added benefit of helping stock the freezer for the guys to take some beautiful fish fillets home.

Awesome stuff.

Going to do some micro jigging in Andamans islands (India) in 4 weeks.

Micro jigging is very cool. Not tiring and catch a unique variety of great fish.

I need to add this trip to my bucket list too.

Mike

Mike

Rick has been trying to talk me into the Andamans trip for a couple of years now. The web site shows some spectacular fishing for both surface popping and micro jigging.

I hope you have started pre season training it looks like you will get your arms stretched on multiple 30+ kg GT's and other similar monsters.

It looks like an awesome trip.

Tight Lines

Bevan

Hi Mike
Its Rick here
Let us know how you go at the Andamans
As Bevan mentioned I've been talking about a trip there for a while now.
The jigging was awesome on the Reef, got spooled 3 times on the "bricks", that's fishing.
I recommended the Gomoku series, I have 5 rods from 20gm to 200gm lure weight size.
Hopefully will get another crack this year with Bevan and the boys, doing it all again...

I will report back.

My short trip to the Lakshadweep was pretty awesome. I should write a report one of these days.

This trip is more popping focused. But other than a few hard core Asian anglers most people cannot pop for anywhere close to a whole days or a few hours.

The other angler is a young Frenchman. This gear is kind of heavy for long term popping anyway. Besides it is End of April and it will be hot,

I am taking a Stella 10k and 6k to maybe a talica 10 to jig.

Want to catch a nice gt jigging.

Mike

Rick

I see you are in Thailand.

have you tried red tail catfish on micro gear. I have a blast at IT Monsters catching red tail and pacu on light gear.

Are the light jigging rods available at sevenseas or other places in Thailand. need to make a tackle trip.

Thanks

Mike

Mate you've got it covered there
Stella's & Talica's are a good call.
I bought a Talica 16 2 speed to fish in PNG a few years ago, though the trip was cut short. I was using an 08 4000 Stella & a Shimano Curado 300J in Cairns which was great, though 40 metres was about it. As mentioned I was spooled a few times.

I have to admit the fishing parks don't do it for me. Though by saying that I have another mate who is keen to catch a "River Monster"
Gillhams Fishing Resort is "the" place to get the big ones.
Maybe I will venture down there one day (Just Nth of Phuket)
7Seasproshop in BKK is a CRACKER of s shop and stock Gomoku Storm Rods as well. They also do sales on line. Light jigging is really getting popular in Thai. There are always plenty of tackle shops around, though you have to find them, and they cater mainly for locals so you may not always find what you want. Though 7Seas are the exception to the rule, and great prices too, and you will get pretty much anything you need there. Make sure you use a GPS to find the shop.

Nice fish!