It just keeps raining

It just keeps raining

Martyn White | Thursday, 15 June 2023

Well it's been another week of storms and high water here so there's been no fishing or even casting practice. Rainy season is really giving it to us this year, but should be finishing soon at least the water table will be nicely topped up before summer. While it's not often easy to be motivated given the conditions, the only thing for me to do is get stuff ready for when conditions improve.

I've been tying little shrimp and crabs for July when Hawaiian Dave and I head to Shizuoka for a couple of days of tripletail fishing. He's currently in the Maldives, but complaining about the fishing because the place he's staying has had some construction that has affected the flat compared to recent years. But I've been looking at the pictures, and those angry midsized bluefin and brassy trevally pictures were enough to tip the scales and get me to switch my holiday plans for the summer. I had been thinking about heading home for a few weeks, despite the ridiculous prices I was seeing for the flights, but then the heat waveswere putting me off a bit too. What's the point of going back to catch pike if it's too hot to do so resposibly? Finally in amongst the pics Dave was sending was the suggestion to revisit an island in Okinawa that we've not been to in years. That was it, decision made. I've booked flights but now Dave can't come! I might get someone to join me or I might just fish alone.

I'm heading down for at least 8 days fishing, maybe more depending on accomodation availability- there aren't many people visiting the island, but there also aren't many places to stay. There's also a nearby uninhabited Island that I might be able to get the dive shop biys to drop me off at for a day, It's smaller but on google earth it looks like it has a nice reef and lagoon with a nice big channel that should create a pressure edge on the running tide which should be a good place to hget a shot at a GT among others. A bit more research to do, but I like the look of it a lot. Hopefully I'll be able to arrange a drop off & pick up run. to check it out.

One thing I have decided to do is take some popping gear, I usually just take fly rods, but my last 2 trips to Okinawa were blighted by bad weather and terrible visibilty for several days which made sight fishing impossible. I often take the plug casting gear off-shore here for when it's too windy to fly fish and I do enjoy it as much as fly fishing, just not as much sight casting to blue shapes booting it along the flat. I do think there's a good chance it'll turn up some serious fish down in Okinawa, especially on the reef edges. That is IF conditions mean I can't sight fish for triggers or trevally. Actually, when I think about it, we should have been taking popping gear and big lures every trip. But then there's the risk that you get torn between the 2 methods and don't really do either as well as you should. I will probably fish the flymost of the time and keep the lures in reserve. But then, I've seen enormous fish out there that would be more suited to a PE10 rod and 200mm lure than a 12 weight. Either way, I'm pretty excited for the trip...

In other news this week, my mate Hiromiki finally edited the video he made of our trip to Hamanako last July, he's much better at the video editing than me so maybe this will be of interest to you too.