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GT Popping South Pacific 2017 , landlocked Gt's that were hungry "No Hooks On"

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We travelled to Kiribati in 2017 to fly on to Fanning island for a surfing and fishing trip.
The small plane to take us to the island broke down so we were stuck on kiribati and had to rethink our tactics and approach quickly as we were only meant to be overnighting on Kiribati.
We found Michael from a local lodge who helped us catch some great fish.
He was a true gentleman and put up with us and our oddities and strange requests to get great results including this epic day out of two that we landed well over 60 fish each day around the 5-12 kg mark in this landlocked saltwater lagoon.

By the end of the session as you can see we took the hooks off as we just couldn't be bothered unhooking them when the "hit" was obviously the best action.
We have never seen GT action like this after extensive travel experience and were saddened to learn that all the fish died as the ran out of food in the lagoon that they were stuck in after finding themselves in after some king tides and swells swamped the low lying atoll and then retreated.

We also saw how this fishery had been degraded by the large tuna boats from Europe who had cleaned out the area of Tuna and drawn the Gt's from the reef which now lived below the moorings in deep water feeding on the waste from the processing ships.

Hopefully Michael and other guides still have a future and its not just a few politicians that profit from selling cheap licences to global Tuna fishing companies.
Category
Fly Fishing