It took us over a year of careful planning, a flurry of emails and phone calls around the world to plan one of the biggest trips in the Popping and Jigging world in the 2011-2012 season. We'd always wanted to host some of the worlds best GT anglers and pit them in a battle against some of the biggest GT in the world. The Andaman Islands have for long been on the GT fishing map, known for a place with prolific GT populations and many other species that readily hammer poppers and stick-baits thrown at them.
We'd previously fished with Eric Le Guyader, the famous French angler and maker of Orion Lures, which are some of the best surface lures ever made for targeting tropical species. So it was only natural he was high up on our list. We also liked his individual style of GT fishing. Fishing with a person like Eric makes running a charter operation in a far off place where logistical nightmares happen on a daily basis worth it all! He has the ability and can land big fish with no fuss! Just what we like....
We then were stuck for another angler and that's when our guide Alban Regnoult came up with the idea of us inviting Kozo Okubo from Japan. A month and many emails later Alban gave us the good news that Mr. Okubo had accepted the invitation and had another surprise for us.... Mr. Okubo was going to be joined by Mr. Toshio Ogasawara of Smith! Mr. Ogasawara's probably best known in the world of Popping and Jigging for having designed the Smith WRC HIIB Rocket!
The 07th to12th of Feb 2012 was to be a epic fishing week in the Andaman Islands. We were going to have 2 larger than life fishing personalities from different parts of the globe targeting GT in our home waters. What made this week so special was watching 2 anglers with very distinct styles of fishing, fish fighting and working lures to raise fish where most other anglers would have given up. Also noticeable was the number of big GT they raised! A friendly clash between 2 Titans of their own worlds.
Having these 2 angling giants with us meant we needed to have the week recorded. Again after much thought we decided to go with the Voyages De Peche in spite of not being able to read French! VDP is one of the best magazines in the world that covers fishing in the Topics. The Andaman Islands have featured many a time in the magazine and the Andaman Islands were not a new experience for Julien Lajournade the chief editor of VDP. Julien was to write an article for the magazine and do a bit of popper fishing on his own with Eric and Kozo.
Alban Regnoult who's fished with us now for 2 seasons helped with tying the loose ends together and making sure everything was in place before the group arrived. He also assisted on the boat and helped land fish and generally made sure everything went smoothly on and off the boat. He's been an invaluable asset to us in the past seasons.
Now that we had everything pretty much ready to go we invited Ryan Lobo, filmmaker, writer, photographer and good friend to join us on the trip. Ryan's no stranger to the Andaman Islands and has visited the Islands on numerous occasions. Ryan has in the past taken photographs for us on various fishing trips. It was good to have him on board taking pictures in his trademark style.... much unlike the run of the mill fishing photographs we see all around us.
Predictably the trip went off without a hitch and it was an awesome experience for all those involved. A complete report of the trip can be found in the latest June-July 2012 edition of the Voyages De Peche magazine at the link below:
We also thank Julien Lajournade from Voyages De Peche for the Photographs used in this post and many more he's sent us from a week of spectacular fishing.
We'll have more up in the following weeks regarding the fishing, lures used and more for those interested in coming to the Andaman Islands to try their hand at catching GT like these guys did!!
Darran Davis & Akshay Malavi.
