Covid 19 has cost us a year and a half in fishing experiences.

For the past 18 months or so we have been unable to travel out of the country and this has impacted on us fishermen.

There are places that we have been unable to visit and species that have been unavailable to us.

The species that I have missed the most is the GT.

These hard fighting bruisers are a species that I really enjoy catching and it has been hard not encountering them for the past year and a half.

That changed for me a couple of weeks ago, when I had the opportunity to go up to Inhassoro in Mozambique and fish with my old friend Lance ‘Paco’ Westerhout.

Paco has accommodation and a charter business in Inhassoro, Gale Force Charters, from where he guides his guests around the Bazaruto archipelago.

Paco knew that I was keen to get to grips with a GT after the long drought and was more than happy to help me get my fix.

We planned each of our fishing outings around the tides of the day and placed special focus on hunting GT’s when conditions were right.

The rest of the time was spent light spinning and jigging for species such as yellowspot trevally, jobfish, king mackerel etc.

When the tides were right we would head to all of Paco’s known GT haunts, where we would throw our poppers and stick baits in an attempt to get a solid GT onto the end of our lines.

We had a number of king mackerel assaults on our lures, with the long, narrow fish taking to the air like missiles as they tried to hit the poppers. We also had some sharks, mainly blackcaps, honing in on the poppers and trying to eat them. Mostly we managed to jerk them away in time, but we did lose some off our favourite lures to these toothy demons.

The highlights though, were when a good GT smashed at the lures, leaving a big hole in the water and a patch of white water where the lure had been.

We had a number of short strikes and a few non hookups, just the sort of frustrating action that makes the GT such a sought after catch.

In the end we managed to land a few teenage sized GT’s, which kept us busy and gave us a lot of entertainment. I was very happy just to get to grips with these fantastic fish, I didn’t need a monster first time out. The monsters were there though, with some massive smashes and they kept us on our toes.

Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to land a huge fish on this trip, but I got to see them and it was good to know that they are still about in numbers.

I am definitely planning to come back during the summer months and get stuck in to some of those trophies that Paco keeps in his backyard.