Christmas with the Dutch Anglers!

This time we thought we'd do it a bit differently... We were keen on getting our clients to write a blog post for us so our readers could hear it straight from the clients.... We had the Dutch Anglers back with us on their second trip... This time Michel and John were ready for the GT and ready to write us an article. Amazingly this was probably on of the most photographed trip will well over a 1000 images of the action that unfolded on the Christmas week.

Christmas fishing in the Andaman Islands 

Michel and I decided to go fishing on the Andaman Islands somewhere during the course of 2013. Michel needed to be in Delhi for his work anyway and my fantastic wife recognized that for me this would be a dream come true; my first ever trip dedicated to the catch of a Giant Trevally using the popper. So she allowed me to leave during the Christmas week (!) to aim for this species. We booked our trip with Game Fishing India with whom Michel had fished in the past already. Six days of fishing excluding the trip up and down to the Andaman Islands from Holland were soon agreed.

Michel and I are both from Holland. We have fished together for many years and also in different setups with other fishermen. Since a few years we form ourselves a group called the “Dutchanglers” and we share our experiences on our Internet platform www.dutchanglers.nl. As we are all having the opportunity to travel a decent amount of time per year we have built up a fair amount of experience fishing different areas in the world, usually aiming for specific or unique species. Besides trying to catch a decent Giant Trevally using the popper we would also try to catch a Dogtooth Tuna through speed-jigging.

And so we left to fish with Game Fishing India. But not before we had completed our gear. The equipment we brought was the following:

Rods:

- Shimano Caranx Kaibutsu Long Cast 200gr

- Shimano Caranx Kaibutsu Pencil Instrument 

Shimano Caranx Kaibutsu Light Pleasure 

Shimano Jigwrex 250gr

Reels:

- Shimano Twin Power SW 10000 and 8000

- Shimano Stella 14000

- Shimano Saragossa 10000

As Michel was already in India for his work we meet in his hotel in Delhi and continued our journey to the Andaman Islands the day after. Game Fishing India welcomed us at the airport of Port Blair and had arranged for transport to the apartment. As always it was nice to be absorbed into another culture and surrounding. The colors, the riksja's, clothes people are wearing, smell of food being prepared, all of this adds to the experience when traveling abroad!

Game Fishing India:

The apartment is nice. A central living room connects to the terraces, sleeping rooms and kitchen. All of them properly equipped and clean. The terrace overlooks the bay. There is enough space to stall your equipment and the decoration and setup "breathes" the fishing world of popper fishing. We are welcomed by Akshay Malavi, together with his lovely wife Nargis and skippers Bunty and Dilip. After some coffee and some general introductions we started to prepare our equipment. Tomorrow will be the first day of fishing!

Game Fishing India on the Andaman Islands is located in the harbor of Port Blair and uses two different types of boats. A Pro Kat 30ft catamaran built in Florida and a 37ft Al Hareb marine boat (Rampage) custom built for them. Both boats are equipped with double Yamaha 225HP outboards. We have used both and can acknowledge both serve the job well. As we experienced serious winds during our week the Rampage had our preference. For the catamaran it was just too choppy.

Game Fishing India has built up serious experience with the area. We have fished on different locations in completely different directions and at very different spots. Whether it was close to shore, in open water or around islands, it is clear they know their way. Not only for the popper fishing for GT but also for the speed-jigging at other species. The fishing is spectacular and so are the tropical bays, sandy beaches, rocky coasts, and atol-like structures which all came across.

And did we catch any fish? Yes, we did! Over the course of the week we caught many GT’s with the largest up to 26kg. We caught them in different areas, both close to shore and in open sea. The largest ones were caught in open waters but unfortunately for us the wind made it impossible to fish out in the open on many occasions. Our favorite poppers were the Halco Roosta Popper and the Dumbell 200 River2Sea popper. During the popper fishing we also caught grouper, snapper, rainbow runner and the beautiful colored Bluefin Trevally. Enough action during the day!

Next to the popper fishing we were able to go out and do some speed-jigging. That made us catch several kind of fish, like dogtooth tuna, snapper, barracuda and tuna. During the speed-jigging we were also free-lining with one rod and live bait. It was clear that this type of fishing has a lot of undiscovered potential. We did not catch any larger fish but the line was bitten off a few time and, tough luck, we lost a Marlin…..

Overall, despite the fact that the wind was making it sometimes a bit difficult we had more than enough activity. And it is clear for us that the Andaman Islands even have much more potential than we were able to achieve in this week.

We really enjoyed a fantastic week with Game Fishing India. The key question is always about the recommendation: “would you recommend this location to another person?”. Our initial response would be "no”. This because we’d like to keep this spot for ourselves as we will definitely come back. No kidding, this is absolutely a place to go for serious anglers who aim to catch fantastic fish in a breathtaking scenery. If you’re in to this and you’re also ready to put in a lot of physical energy and motivation into it, the Andaman Islands will reveal its treasures and offer you world-class fishing and catching. And Game Fishing India is definitely the organization to help you making your dreams come true!

Enjoy, Good luck and Catch & Release please.

John Smit & Michel Rijnberg

www.dutchanglers.nl

The Netherlands

We'll soon have a photo essay up of this great week of fishing on our blog. Looking forward to fishing with the Dutch Anglers at either of our locations again.

Team GFI