INDIANANGLER

Greetings,

Landed a couple of cudas from the rocks in Chennai. Details coming soon.



Thanks,
Maruthu

Machan too good....We'll meet up this weekend

fantastic mate.
you seemed to have attracted a lot of attention

regards

I badly wanted to do some pencil popping and hence took an old fiber carbon (whippy) spinning rod and loaded my shimano stradic 5000 with 20 lb mono and went to the fishing harbour in Chennai. That Gibb's pencil popper was dancing like a charm, but couldn't do this for more than a minute or so as I was a total noob to pencils.

After the usual issue that I have with mono on spinning reels, I took the other spool with 30 lb pp braid and was popping for a while until a bunch of tangled line came out on a cast. I was about to call it a day and quit, but by then it was cuda time (dusk).

Cut the tangled braid and attached the mono and then wire leader and started plugging for barracudas in my usual GT hole. After trying several lures I switched to a Yozuri mag minnow in Sardine pattern. I felt a bit nervous before I made a cast (is that called confidence?). On the first cast ...... bang a fish takes the lure in half a dozen cranks. A lightining fast run with a screaming drag. But then he was done and I landed him in the next couple of minutes.

As per a friend's advice I unhooked the fish and soon made the next cast in the same place and there comes his buddy.

Cheers,
Maruthu

Nice fish mate. Got to get me some of those.

nice fish mate

nice show

Very nice.

Hi Maruthu,

Nice job.


Jeen

Hi Mate,
Well done and nice report. Keep it up.
Regards,
Ali..

Thanks everyone for the encouragement.

Bobby, I believe I am still 5' 8" tall
The fish weighed 3.9 Kg and 4.74 Kg on a digital scale.

Maruthu

Then you must have put on weight mate, look a lot more grown up since I saw you in your last picture.

Lovely looking fish, well done.
I'm very envious.

Well done Muthu,

Nice report and good catch.

Regards,

Arun

Hi MM,

Thanks for the info. I had my first hit by a barracuda on a 1.5 ounce Gibb's polaris popper when I reeled it very slow (I was actually testing the lure to see if it wiggles on a slow retrieve). The fish leaped entirely out of the water just within 10 foot from me, but didn't hookup.

Can you please let me know on how to work poppers for Barracudas? I assume that the popper should be reeled in slowly with occational small splashing?

I shall switch to barbless hooks, as I do not keep all that I catch. With barbed hooks it was nearly impossible to unhook the fish (with pliers) so that it remains in a good condition to be released.

Thanks,
Maruthu

Here are some pics of the terrain









Maruthu

how did you land the fish? gaff? hands?
was there lots of thrashing around?

The terrain looks very similar to where I used to fish for GT's in Hong Kong.