The new year started quite pleasantly here as tourist numbers looked as good as the weather. Thus the charter boats had numerous trips. Typically trolling and often half days but especially the smaller gamefish were cooperative and made for happy faces like here on JD`s Onle Love II, Greg`s Amberjack and Brandon`s Island Rhythm.

Billfish also showed to some degree. While from several raises among the boats only Marlin was caught some Sailfish made up for that. This sweet little bugger was caught by Brandon`s guest while the boat released one more along those days and other boats also got one here and there.

Next to this rather classic fishing a few other things took place. For Greg this is often fly fishing from the boat and one of these trips produced this beautiful squid. These really like flies following again and again for whiles but usually never get really stuck. This one did, cool pic.

Sandro on Frenzy had a 3hrs trip light tackle trolling just around a small island and was very impressed how well the two angling youngsters coped.

So fishing fun for everyone here those days. Like every year tourist numbers dropped sharply after the first week or so and with experienced visitors dedicated to fish avoiding this season because of the weather that indeed turned instable only very few more trips took place since. 

That mentioned day of a break was much appreciated by Mario from Germany who had seen his long planned trip with Sandro being cancelled twice early morning because of the weather. That 17th now was his very last opportunity and just then wind, swell and current were friendly all day so we had a pretty good time. Thanks to those Amberjacks of which about a dozen were caugt with some double digit specimen among them. Nice that I could also drop a jig a few times to get one of those and thus begin my fishing year with a proper catch.

As out there Manta Rays and a Whale Shark showed up with more decent fish caught it was a really enjoyable day despite the Tuna as nearly all season long would not show up for topwater casting.

Am really thankful to Mario for that Amberjack as it indeed remained my only presentable catch for this year so far. Fly fishing for weeks now is only possible in a single spot which reliably though produces mostly just hand size fishies. Meanwhile going out alone on a small boat is no option at all due to those fast moving cells with heavy rainfall, thunder and lightning at times and often really hard winds. Only occasionally the odd trolling boat tried it`s luck but did not have much joy out there. Just Mervin on Lady C fished seriously for another 5 days with a repeater. They made it to the Drop only once along those 5 days and were forced to return after just a few hours. So it was mainly popping around the islands which also was not exactly easy and fun throughout. But there were some sunny spells and the GTs did not let them down completely.

Right since these trips were done with mid of last week the wind howls and it is pouring hard a lot of the time. A weather warning was upgraded from yellow to orange and peeking outside thing look like this:

Not really a tropical paradise thus and if the improvement predicted for next week will materialize remains to be seen.

For the preceeding reports check the archive.