Tripletail - Dirty fighter!

There is no doubt about it - what I am holding in my hand is one of the dirtiest fighters I've come across. And the what happens to be the largest TripleTail of this fishing trip which took my bait - we didn't have a boga with us so we could not get the exact weight of this fish but our experienced boatman and deckie estimated this fish to weigh at least 3kg. 3kg of pure muscle.

Now, I would not have managed to land this triple tail at all if not for the man in the picture below - the deckie whom we addressed as "Abang" (brother, in Malay). He is without doubt, the most hardworking and experienced deckie that I have come across. There was a mild feeding frenzy going on at the rear of the boat when I felt the tap tap on the end of the line at the bait and after counting silently to 8, I struck hard to set the hook. Immediately, the reel starting singing as the line peeled off and despite tightening the drag on Mr Brad, I kept losing line to whatever it was at the end of the line. I was tempted to set full drag but at the rate the line kept peeling off, to do so might be folly as the creature on the other end appeared to have enough strength to snap off the line. And while I was debating whether to set full drag or not, the singing stopped abruptly and when I tried to retrieve the line...only to find out that it was STUCK. As if sungkot (stuck between rocks/corals or caught on the ropes in the water). I was all of like, damn damn, and even the deckie agreed that this was a lost cause. Because of the expensive leader and complicated knot used to join both leader and line, I asked him not to cut line but to retrieve for me as much of the line as he could. So using a towel, he slowly retrieved the line for me by pulling the line towards the boat by hand while I cranked Mr Brad. Guess what, my set up ( 50lb leader and 40lbs braid and 2 knots (main to leader and leader to knot) was amazingly strong enough to withstand the pressure to pull the entire boat towards the spot where it appeared that my hook was sungkot. When we peered at the area where it appeared that my hook was, we realised that the triple tail was actually among the unjung (ropes in the water) and it had lodged itself firmly amongst the ropes and leaves in the water. Everyone hushed as the boatman used the landing net to scoop up the complacent tripletail which was snug in the unjung. Hah! We beat the fish!

Dirty fighter indeed, much like groupers which head straight for the holes in the corals once hooked! However, combined with the fight and strength of a seabass (kim) (unlike groupers which mostly give up once you get them out of the hole and do not go for runs), the tripletails are great fighting fishes if not dirty fighters towards the end. Do not estimate the strength of a triple tail ever - it has more fight in it than a cobia! The most important thing when fishing for tripletails is having a boatman experienced enough to have his own private spots (where he plants unjungs) and who knows what kind of bait triple tails take. I read on the net that tripletails take shrimps but not the tripletails at these spots. I used shrimp to test out the theory and got no hits at all but the moment I used bloody fish meat from certain bait fishes (tripletails can be fussy eaters), the takes by the fishes came almost non-stop. There is the tap tap one would feel on the bait, then one should count to 8 and strike hard to set the hook. We caught almost 3 bags full of triple tails (see pic above) - talk about fantastic fishing!

We? Yes, the 4 of us on Mike's boat - my colleagues and one honarary member (nephew of 1 of my colleagues) who is holding the large triple tail I caught and who has therefore reduced me to holding one of the smaller triple tails pulled from the 3 sackfuls. Talk about great fishing indeed at Rompin! :) When it came to fish distribution time, I specifically requested for the largest triple tail I caught so I could bring it home to show my mother. And here it is at about 2am in the night. The fish was so big that it could not fit into the sink properly and had to be laid diagonally across. The nokia phone in the picture was placed there to give an idea of the size of the fish. And below are some of the other triple tails I brought back too after the fishes were distributed amongst the 8 of us anglers. If you have been wondering why the fish is called a triple tail, just look at the position of the fins on this fish - doesn't it look like a 3 leaf clover ie triple tail? I'm hoping to get more of these fellows on the next fishing trip which is next week but it's off to Bali first until 1st June 2010!