Sri Lanka Part One: Saltwater fishing in Kirinda

Back in March last year, my family and I booked up a fishing holiday with Sportquest and Gamefishing Asia to Sri Lanka. We had researched the fishing in many countries and had been looking for a trip that would give us a great chance of bumping up our species lists, and at the same time, a good chance of catching some big fish on lures, such as Giant Trevally. The one species that really swayed our decision to go to Sri Lanka in the end was the Clown Knifefish, known in Sri Lanka as the Featherback, which was a fish Dad and I had been dreaming of catching. Sri Lanka looked like a beautiful country to visit and try for these, as well as many other species.

We flew out on the 18th December, staying for Christmas and New Year, with five days fishing booked with Nicolas Jamin in Kirinda on Sri Lanka’s south coast, and then a long drive to Lake Bolgoda in the hope of Featherback. The idea was to lure fish using different techniques so we could maximise our chances of catching different species - using poppers and stickbaits for big GT’s, heavy speed jigging in deep water and light or slow jigging on the reefs, which proved to be a great way of bumping up the species list.

We took along a range of chugger poppers, pencil poppers, floating and sinking stickbaits for the GT’s, as well as some GT Ice Cream lures. The takes were absolutely insane as they blasted our lures! Then all hell breaks loose, and you have a full on battle with one of the meanest, toughest, strongest fish that swims! It had been a while since I’d caught a big saltwater fish and my first big Sri Lankan GT, which was also one of my biggest of the trip, beat me up big time!

Most of our days were spent fishing various methods, but on two of the days we fished exclusively for big GT’s, and on our penultimate day, Nico said we were on a mission to catch as many GT as possible, as he was starting a tagging programme. On that day we boated 16 between us to around 20kg and lost at least 5, and missed as many takes. The Sébile Splasher 190, Heru Skipjack 150, GT Ice Cream Skinny and FC Labo floating stickbait were our four most successful GT lures.

Earlier in the week, whilst targeting the GT, I also managed to land a nice Spanish Mackerel using one of Nico’s poppers - the whole fish came flying out of the water as it took the lure! I was lucky not to get bitten off, as the teeth on a Spanish Mackerel are razor sharp - the popper also cost upwards of $80 too, which would have been costly!

Dad also caught a big Bluefin Trevally on a chartreuse Sébile Splasher. He seemed to be a Bluefin Trevally magnet throughout the whole trip - he must have caught well over 20 on all the lure methods - and I only caught one!

We also caught a few GT’s speed jigging and light jigging. I’ve only ever tried speed jigging once and that was in Mauritius a couple of years ago, and just like the popping for GT’s, it’s an exhausting way of fishing, especially in over 30°C, but very exciting.

At Kirinda we hooked up in to some very big fish - you’d hook up, get a few headshakes and then the fish would go on a run that was almost impossible to stop on the gear we were using! Nico reckoned these were huge Dogtooth Tuna. We did manage to land some of the fish we hooked speed jigging though, including smaller Dogtooth Tuna, GT’s, Barracuda, Tuna and Bluefin Trevally.

Some of the best fun we had was light jigging with speed and slow jigs between 60g - 120g. Before we headed to Sri Lanka I bought a PE2 slow jigging rod, which I coupled with an Abu Revo Toro Beast loaded with 30lb Whiplash, and this proved to be a great move - not only for catching multiple species, such as Tomato Grouper, Rainbow Runner, Doublespotted Queenfish and Lunartail Snapper, but I was amazed at the size of the fish it could handle! We caught some nice Gold Spot Trevally and I also landed this Spanish Mackerel after it gave me one hell of a fight! The drag on the Revo Toro Beast was certainly singing, but it was very smooth and handled the fish really well.

Nico also managed to catch this amazing looking Napoleon Wrasse - a fish that he’d been wanting to catch for many years.

We caught a lot of smaller fish too, but it's always great fun when you're not quite sure what you're going to hook in to next and all of these were new species for us, which really made our trip.

One of the best sights I saw whilst fishing was a Blue Whale spouting, with the back and tail coming out of the water as it descended in to the depths - it was absolutely huge! We also saw Dolphins and on the following day, which was Christmas Eve, we went on a safari in Yala National Park. In the space of 24 hours I saw a Blue Whale, Elephants, Water Buffalo, Monitor Lizards, Crocodiles, Wild Boar, Deer, Hares, Mongoose, Monkeys and a Leopard!

There were plenty of monkeys around, even around the hotel Dad and I were heading off fishing for the day and my Mum turned the TV on, which she had been watching the night before, and there was no reception. Later that morning, whilst we were fishing, she asked at the reception desk, and they got a mechanic in to have a look. It turned out that Monkeys had stolen the satellite dish!!

Christmas Eve turned out to be a very special one as our taxi driver, Kamal, and his family joined us for the safari - his wife Priyanka, his daughter Prishani and son Shehan. You couldn’t find a friendlier family and after the safari we had a great Christmas Eve gala dinner at our hotel with them, with a few beers afterwards!

On Christmas morning we went fishing (as you do!). Kamal took us to a river, so we took an LRF rod along with us to see if we could catch some new species. It only took 30 seconds or so for Dad to catch his first fish, which was only a few ounces, but it was certainly a new species. He dropped it back in the water whilst I was getting the camera out, then he saw the head of a Crocodile of about 10ft long loom up from the murky water and engulf the fish! He didn't have much chance of landing it on an LRF rod! Frustratingly, we didn’t get a picture of the fish - so we still don’t know what it was!

Just a few minutes later, we heard something running behind us along the road. We didn’t look behind at first, thinking it was a stray dog, which there were plenty of, but then, I looked around and it turned out to be a huge Monkey, probably about 4ft long! It missed us by a couple of feet and continued to run along the road for another 20m or so before disappearing behind the rocks!

Anyway, we moved after half an hour as we hadn’t had any interest since Dad hooked the Crocodile. We went to the estuary of another river, which was an amazing setting to fish in - there were Elephant footprints in the sand and loads of monkeys - on the other side of the river this time! There were many different types of birds, especially Kingfishers, including the Pied Kingfisher. We caught a new species for us both here (which I’m yet to find the name of), and I also landed a small GT on a crankbait.

We had a fantastic time in Kirinda, and we really enjoyed our stay at Elephant Reach Resort and fishing with Nico. Both Nico and his mate Achila were brilliant and Nico was arguably the best guide we’ve ever fished with - his knowledge and experience of fishing for a multitude of species all across the world is mind-blowing! Not only that, he's a great guy, very friendly and very helpful.

On the 28th it was time to move on to our next destination - which I’ll talk about in my next post!

A few good fish from a tough two months fishing

It's been over two months since I last updated my blog, which I think is the longest I've ever left it, so I have quite a bit of catching up to do on this occasion! I must admit, everywhere I've fished seems to have been fishing hard for a while now, and we've had to really work hard to get some better fish on the bank (or boat).

I'll start by picking up from where I left off really, which was fishing the midlands reservoirs. We've had a few trips to Grafham and a day on Rutland targeting the Zander, although at this time of year the fishing is often much harder than it is during the summer and early autumn. We've been trying to target the bigger fish by pelagic fishing, which is essentially using your fishfinder/chartplotter to find big fish suspended off the bottom, then dropping down a large split tail or similar soft bait to around the same depth as the fish. You watch the sonar screen carefully as you lower your lure down, to make sure your lure is within a couple of feet of the fish, but not too close so that you spook them. Sometimes the fish aren't interested and turn away, but when they are interested, you'll watch them swim up to your lure on the sonar screen, and (this is the exciting part), slam it like no tomorrow! This was my biggest Zander from our last three trips, which took a 6" split tail - you can see me drop the lure down, and the fish come up and take it on the screenshot!

On one morning whilst I was pelagic fishing, Dad hooked in to this nice Pike, which he caught jigging a shad along the bottom.

Whilst we've been targeting the Zander, we've also caught some cracking Brown Trout. On the trip before last, I hooked in to, at first, what I thought was a good Pike, as it felt like it had quite a lot of weight to it, tore off loads of drag and was head shaking like crazy. It eventually surfaced and turned out to be a huge reservoir Brownie of 9lb 7oz, which is not only a Grafham P.B for me, but as far as I know, it's the biggest Trout caught from Grafham this year!

On our last trip, right at the end of the day, I saw a fish on the sonar in around 30ft of 54ft of water, so I dropped my 6" split tail down and once it reached 30ft, almost instantly I had an almighty whack. I thought I'd hooked in to a very big Zander, especially as the light was fading, but once again I'd guessed the species wrong! We were both surprised and very frustrated when it turned out to be a big Bream of around 10lb! We've caught some big Bream in the past to over 10lbs on flies, and although we didn't weigh this fish, it was certainly my biggest lure caught Bream!

That was our last trip to a reservoir and since then, we've mainly been fishing rivers, with a couple of trips on gravel pits for Pike. Like the reservoir fishing, a lot of our local gravel pits have been fishing hard too - however, we had one trip exploring a pit, and it was quite a contrast to our previous Pike trips over the past couple of months! Jerkbaits in particular worked very well and helped us land 12 Pike, with three of those being doubles, which was brilliant sport!

We had a trip to the Thames fishing from our boat at the beginning of last month, with the main target species Perch. Crankbaits often work well for us on the Thames and we caught most of the 40-odd fish we boated on Berkley Frenzy Flicker Shads and the new Bad Shads, but the best Perch of the day was caught on a creature bait - the Havoc Rocket Craw. The Rocket Craw has become a real favourite of mine in the three years I've been using it and it's helped me catch Pike to 26lb 2oz, Perch to 3lb 15oz, Zander to nearly 10lb, along with big Chub and even a Carp of around 17lb a couple of years ago! This one took a Rocket Craw in Purple Pumpkin Red, that was cast through the branches of a willow tree and fell tight to its roots.

Most of our fishing since our Thames trip has been on smaller rivers, mixing it up between fishing locally and further afield. One of our best trips in the past month or so was exploring a new stretch of a river, banking over 40 Perch between us - ten of those were over 2lb and whilst shads caught the majority of the fish, eight of the ten 2lb'ers were caught on another favourite creature bait of ours, the Havoc Pit Boss Jr.

We returned a few days later and Dad also caught a chunky Pike too, along with a couple more 2lb+ Perch.

Since that trip the fishing has been rock hard, and similarly to the Pike fishing we were experiencing throughout November, on many of the sessions we've had it's been a case of only a couple of bites a trip, although they've often been better fish. Both the Pit Boss Jr. and Rocket Craw have helped us catch most of our bigger Perch over the past month or so.

Our last trip was on our local River Lea - we only fished for a couple of hours, and it was a mostly quiet afternoon, with just a small jack and a follow from a very nice Perch, but right at the last minute, on my last cast, I had a very delicate take, which made heading out all worthwhile! It was a short and chunky stripey which weighed 3lb 1oz, and took a Rocket Craw in Breen Clear Chartreuse.

It's been a while since I've done any filming on my GoPro, but a few months ago, whilst fishing I spotted a big shoal of Roach, and as I had my GoPro on me anyway, I decided to film them. This huge shoal had attracted some nice Perch, a few Pike (one of which was a 20lb'er) and I was also lucky to capture a Great Crested Grebe attacking the shoal! I'd been meaning to put everything together in to a short video for a while, and at the end of October I finally got round to finishing it off.

I know it's not quite the end of the year yet, but as this will be my last blog post of 2016, I'd like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and all the best for 2017! I've been very lucky this year to have experienced some fantastic fishing, and best of all spend it with some brilliant anglers and friends. Here's hoping 2017 is a good one for all of us!