A good long wait of 4 months and loss of job had taken its toll. The angling partners were feeling dejected like hell. Whist people were reeling kings and queens and cobia's. We have to be satisfied by landing a few silver grunters. As the season comes to a close. We decide to hit the Ajman waters, the earlier weekend we witnessed people landing big kingfish and one of our kayak pals landing king and pulling barracudas left and right and releasing them. All we could do was be good spectators and cheer him up. The walk on the break water rocks is yet another insanity, now to add to it it’s the summers that make your sweat run down your back hole.
FRIDAY , APRIL 16, 2010 0530 HRS.
A long drive from Dubai to Ajman. We reach the spot and being the long tiring walk and we find people already clogging the spot. There were a few banglas who were emptying the dory snappers from the ocean, insane people. There was yet another Ahmedinejad citizen with his irritating hindi screwing up my grey matter. I mean they pronounce it as "LAURA". Hope you guys get the rest of their hindi. Very soon a Filipino lands a BIG Queen. I mean it, it was big compared to the torso of the angler :) Me and keyur cast our lines with sardines as bait and let the rod holder do the rest of the job for us while I was targeting live bait, keyur was spinning with no results. The RODS were rock steady no movement at all. A few moments later, I see some ones rod calling and little did I realize that it was my rod. Jumped up a couple of rocks pulled the rod and reel and strike and the rod slipped the bottom grip, but the fish was hooked. Was giving a good fight and was not ready to surface for identity until up close the landing zone. Approx 15 minutes fight and the guesses were probably a KING FISH. Once up close it was like OMFG, it’s a catfish :), the gentleman helped me land this one, this fish reminded me of the redundancy and we were determined to release it
. Below are a few snaps of the cat, please excuse me for the ugly photography as it was me holding the fish and taking pics from my mobile camera.
Species: Catfish (Arius Thalassinus)
Weighed: Approx to 1.2 kgs
Fate: Released :)
Bait: Sardine
Cast out the second time with sardine on the bait and few minutes had one more strike, the fish was perfectly hooked and was reeling it in and presumably from the behavior, it was a grouper of good size dragged my line and dived for cover, then started the game of patience, the line had a 50 lbs 8 feet leader, so I was not really worried about my main braid snapping. The fish never gave up. It tried a few attempts and I managed to reel in my line a few meters but the fish would just dive for cover after every attempt to run. It was more than half hour of patience. Tried every possible suggestions of giving a slack and everything. But the Grouper was determined. Finally as keyur suggested to yank and suspend the fish when it makes the next run, I tightened the drag to full and YANKED with full might snapping my 50 lbs leader
, yet another grouper lost on the same spot
WOW, fixed another 2 hook rig and used sardine fillets and cast out as far as I could but the leader/braid knot limited the casting distance, guess what the bait landed on the water and I was reeling the line and there I felt something biting my bait and out of curiosity I yanked and hooked the small burger and was reeling in and far off I could see the fish as a zebra fish(jarbua terapon), Keyur was on the lower rocks and when he witnessed it was a a small cobia. I hear the word cobia and I reeled in and full speed :) hammering the fish left and right on the rocks. I was a pretty small cobia, less than a feet long. But than I have never caught one in my life and wanted this as a keeper. Photos of this one are with Keyur ("Keyur please upload the pics of my first BIG Cobia").
No sooner Keyur was reeling in something big, our excitement knew no bounds because we were reeling in fish after a long long time, we were waiting for a big big surprise as this was not giving a fight like the pelagic's but was pulling hard and the unexpected happened, the line snapped. The guess till now remains a mystery.
I had my line cast with same setup and after a good half hour my reel was singing again and it was loud and clear. I was sure this was another cobia, with the kind of pull it gave, it took a lot of line and was not ready to give up, when I tried to see where my line was I could see the direction of the line and some thing whitish thing doing acrobats, it was a STING RAY, this fish has might, I very well played the fish with cool head this time, probably close to half an hour, it wouldn't give up till the last minute, my spine was cursing me. I had a bad wrist that day as well to add to it. Finally, it was decided that we will take photos and weigh the fish and release it. While we were landing the fish the water went rough and make it difficult to get the fish in the landing net as the fish was big in diameter compared to the net. Some more water splashes and the ray was washed ashore among the rocks and in this bargain one of the hooks got tangled in the landing net and snapped the ray was free but got stuck in the rocks and could not move out of that place for a good one hour, our intentions of releasing it almost failed as the tide was moving out, we could see the fish stuck between the rocks. During this time there were no takes and lines were idle. We decided to wind up as it was getting hot. So I decided to gaff the fish and take it out as it was anyways going to die on those rocks, my efforts failed but Keyur was able to gaff it by the tail and surface the symmetric creature on the rocks. It weighed a good 9 KG. The fish was later released safely, however, it was gaffed by the tail. Hope it recovers the wound.
Species: Scaly Stingray (Dasyatis imbricatus)
Weighed: 9 kgs
Fate: Released
Bait: Sardine
What a day it was!
Catfish
Catfish (Whisker Pose)
Scaly Stingray
Scaly Stingray (Close up)
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