LEAVING Sydney Airport, Chris and I had a great sense of anticipation of the week ahead – six days targeting Papua New Guinea black bass.
A month or so before we’d received an invitation from Jason Yip and Kori Chan from Sport Fishing PNG (http://sportfishingpng.net) to target bass in the Gulf Region of PNG, about a five hour drive west of the PNG Capital of Port Moresby.
The PNG black bass, or black snapper as the Americans call them, are on the “bucket list” of many anglers. With their reputation of big, bone jarring hits and dirty, powerful fighting tactics in tight gnarly structure, Chris and I were pumped! Although accustomed to fighting fish in tight structure we are more at home with light bream tackle. In fact, truth be known, neither of us had used a baitcaster before.
On arrival, Jason informed us that the weather had been pretty ordinary with a lot of rain in the Gulf and the village where we were heading had been underwater only two weeks before. “Be prepared to work hard for the fish,” was Jason’s advice.
The drive to Kerema the next morning had us anxiously discussing tactics and listening to the excited banter between Jason and seasoned black bass “trophy hunter” NickWheeler, from Singapore.
On his fourth trip to PNG Nick was there for one reason and one reason only – to catch a 40 pounder! He didn’t care how he did it, trolling, casting, livebaiting… On each successive trip to PNG, Nick had systematically upgraded his gear to cope with the ferocious battle with the bass. This trip he was armed with “broomsticks” for rods and 100lb braid and 300lb Kevlar leaders. Chris and I were starting to feel a little undergunned, especially after Nick told us he’d lost a bass on the Kevlar only two days before!
We had two outfits each, a Daiwa TMX-G601H baitcast rod and Z2020H reel, and Daiwa Steez STZ 701 HFS-DA”Hot Dog” and Exist 3000. The heaviest braid we had was 50lb onthe Z2020, and we’d maxxed out with 120lb leader.
The first afternoon on the water we witnessed Nick land the first bass for the trip. A harrowing fight in amongst the snags the fish gave him some real stick, and it was only a 14 pounder. Chris hooked and landed one of similar size not long after, and we were starting to think a bigger one was going to be easy pickings. How wrong we were…
We had some mammoth hits that instantly pulled line on locked up drags, and were made to look amateurish by other fish that had us back in the snags before we realised what was happening.
That night we upgraded leaders from 80lb to 120lb, replaced the 30lb braid on the Exists, and I had a restless night sleep dreaming about catching my first black bass.
I’ve now learnt that black bass are elusive. A fish of a thousand casts perhaps (or maybe 5000), they’re temperamental to the conditions; we spent the next four days without catching one. From 6am to 6pm each day casting with intense concentration we tried to crack a pattern. The conditions weren’t ideal with the rivers running dirty and bites few and far between, and accordingly our concentration waned.
The cultural experience was exceptional though, as we interacted and ate with local villagers, and guides. The local village people were very friendly and we didn’t feel unsafe at all during the trip.
Oh, and the bycatch! We caught a smorgasbord of species: jacks, fingermark, trevally, giant gourami,and some massive barra. Over two days, Nick caught a 62lb barra, Chris and one of the local guides landed a 55lb specimen, and my first ever barra was a 99cm fish – some bycatch!
Our last day of fishing was spent closer to Port Moresby at Galley Reach. Although still not ideal the conditions had improved and Jason was confident that we’d get into some bass. He was also pretty insistent that we’d throw surface lures all day. The morning was tough going, though I raised a couple of fish on a Halco Roosta popper.
All of a sudden as I was working the popper close to a snag, there was a huge explosion on the surface and the popper disappeared in the white water. The fish was easily stripping drag off the locked up Z2020, something the almost-a-metre barra was unable to do, and I had my thumb firmly planted on the spool to slow it down. Eventually, Jason netted my first Papuan black bass, a 14-pounder, after six hard days of fishing. In hindsight, having worked so hard for that fish made it one of my most rewarding captures.
Fifteen minutes later Chris pulled another bass off a nearby snag on a floating stickbait. Nearly twice the size of mine at 22lb, it was a seriously explosive, frantic battle. I could only image how dirty a 40 pounder would fight.
Then it all went quiet again! You really couldn’t have scripted it better though. As a guide, Jason did his job and got us both onto black bass but he managed to build the anticipation, which came to a head on that final afternoon. To steal a phrase from one of Jason’s Japanese clients, “this is fishing!”
For more check out http://www.lureandfly.com.
