Miracle & Nop

We were visited by our neighbors Miracle Andy and Nop in late March 2010. Andy and Nop were paying us a visit from Thailand and had to travel well over a 1000 miles to fish 400 miles away from where they started. Hopefully by next season the airport in Port Blair will become an International one and will make travel from the East to the Andaman Islands a much easier proposition. Miracle and Nop were with us for 4 days of popper and jig fishing, targeting mainly GT on popper and other jig eating species. We fished the first day from Port Blair, second and third from Havelock and kept the last day as primarily a jigging day from Port Blair. A plan that worked well and saw us lands a number of decent fish on popper and jig.

Nop opened the account with a nice GT caught on popper! Both Andy and Nop were fishing with brand new Smith Komodo Dragon rods they'd bought specially for this trip.

Andy casting a raider into a bait-school, waiting for the lure to sink half way to the bottom and then reeling in fast. This produced some vicious strikes from GT when they weren't feeding on the surface. With a small change in tactics fish can still be caught if they get wary of a particular kind of lure.

Nop posing with a small GT caught on light tackle, off a shallow reef.

Andy with another nice specimen GT caught off the same reef as Nop's fish. Fish this size were many and all willing to take a bite out of whatever the guys threw at them. In this case a small bibbed hard plastic lure did the trick!

Andy with a nice Coral Trout before it was released.

Nop posing with another thick GT that his Stella 10000 and Smith Komodo Dragon had no trouble stopping.

We dedicated a day to jigging in the South, while fishing from Port Blair. We couldn't resist popping on the way and caught a quick couple of GT and a reef shark in a couple of drifts. We headed off on a 45 min run to our jigging marks and were rewarded by a Spanish Mackerel as we arrived. Spanish Mackerel are notorious for biting off jigs or cutting through assist chord but this fish wasn't so lucky. A couple of blistering runs later this fish was brought to the boat and photographed.

Andy and Nop soon realised a painful mistake.... they'd packed their fighting belts away as it was their last day of fishing and didn't realise what they were in for jigging here in the Andaman Islands. Half an hour in to our jigging session we had them both squirming, grimacing and fighting fish in the oddest fashions :-)

Nop with a beautiful 8 to 10 kilo GT that pulled him around the boat on it's way up.

A couple of quick Bludger Trevally from a school that passed through our jigging spot.

In the middle of all the action a solid fish grabbed Andy's jig and hurtled off a wall into the depths, after a fairly quick and intense fight Andy managed to raise this fish for a quick photo and release.

A pleasant surprise for Nop with a double hook up of GT on Jig, something we don't see too often on jig but see fairly often on popper. This goes to show how we were literally plagued by schools of small to medium sized GT, every now and again we managed to hook and raise a better fish. Often the bigger fish just don't get a chance to get to the jig with the smaller, quicker and more agile GT around.

We also ran into endless schools of Green Job fish. They're great scrappers and we wish they grew bigger. We had a day of over 20 of these fish in a short interval, mainly taking jigs on the drop or when the jig was stopped mid water.

We moved to a shallower sea mount where Andy hooked this large grouper! The fish of the trip for him.

A small Dog Tooth Tuna off a 80+ meter wall.

We headed back to Port Blair after an excellent day of jigging and on our way back stopped at a 90 meter plateau. Fish were marking on top of this small plateau. Dropped jigs and were rewarded by a double hook up of Amber Jack!

We had a great time fishing with Andy and Nop and hope to see them soon in the Andaman Islands fishing with us.

Darran & Akshay.