Sudan North popping (trip)week 3
With a late night start on our way North, we started the Popping and Jigging week with calm seas and a slight North wind starting to wake up. Fishing was tough with most of the fish including the GT’s, Bluefin, and Barracuda pushed into shore over shallow reefs .
Hoping that the wind would pick up in the afternoon flushing out the bigger fish our persistence paid off with 2 Gt’s destroying sinking stick baits and barracuda on the prowl, we ran into a couple of toothy critters, nothing to boast about but they saved the day.
As the week progressed we headed North in search of the elusive Red Sea Giant Trevally,
fishing incredible Reefs, and Islands we found most of the predatory fish to be hanging around deep drops around 15-20 meters. Pristine conditions a little bit of “chop” on the water and meant fishing was on fire with both panga’s successfully landing numerous Gt’s around 80-100 cm and many Peacock Grouper including a few very nice Coral trout ranging from 50 to 70 cm.
We stowed the Popping rods and brought out the jigs. Dropping jigs from 150g to 350g, we found a happy medium at 250g with 60-80 meters of water and a slow and steady current in search of some grouper and other reef species we struck luck and landed 9 decent Moontail Grouper and a few Orange spot Trevally came to hand to a nice end of the day.
At our halfway mark, with a couple of days to go, we reached the most Northern point of this week’s itinerary.
We decided to give the Panga’s a rest and headed to shore for some flats fishing. As we landed upon the chosen island I had a glance over the cliff and saw a GT trailing a massive Barracuda hiding behind a coral mushroom one cast two quick twitches of the rod and fish on!! With a low bellowing scream I instructed David to run uphill and pull like a possessed demon which he did and we ended up landing the first and only GT of the day at 91cm.
All excited for the day we made our way East on the island to reach the jagged cliff section packed with coral bommies in each and every direction.
After waiting 20 minutes and a bunch of laughs later a pack of electrified Bluefin Trevally cruised right into our hole and a short flick of the rods double up on some very decent Bluefin.
Safely released we spent some serious time and effort from the cliffs with an absurd amount of fish moving up and down we managed to land a couple more bluefin Trevally and a couple of trigger fish on small topwater poppers was something to witness in spawning mode angry and completely pissed off at anything that went close to their nest they savagely attacked poppers that resulted in some decent Titan Triggerfish landed we made our way to the panga to end the day.
On our way to (Felicidad II) we spotted some big schools of Tuna without hesitation we headed in their direction our boat driver Musa placed us in the best position possible that resulting in a triple up on Red Tuna, after landing all three we puttered back and behold another school and another Double up we called it quits after seven decent Tuna and a grinning smile from ear to ear from the clients the day ended on an absolute high.
To end off an incredible week despite the weather, we embarked on one last mission East in search of Bohar snapper and big Geets. We slowly made our way into the big swell pushing from North East and 25knot winds from the North we hit the correct point of the reef where all the currents and turbulence enter into confluence, This is where the chaos erupted Cast for cast eats, being reefed big monsters we were able to pull a few angry and hungry GT’s three of which were over 22kg biggest came in at 122cm at approximately 27-30 kg and another 4 varying from 13-18 kg plus the bonus Red Sea reefing monster - the Bohar snapper. North Popping and Jigging is a trip every serious Spin fisherman should add to their Bucket list.
