I had some brand new tackle to try out on this trip and was looking forward to putting it through its paces and seeing how it stood up to a few days of tough fishing. The rods were a pair of Abu Garcia Ike Travel spinning rods. I matched these with an Abu Garcia Revo Inshore reel and a Penn Clash 2 high speed reel.

My first fish of the trip was a Malabar rockcod, which I hooked by casting a 72mm Sebile suspending Stick Shadd next to a rock ledge and allowing it to sink. It was still sinking when it was hit hard and line started peeling from my drag. The fish was solid, probably around 4kg’s, and was a good portent of some spectacular fishing to come.

Over the next four days we caught eleven different species of fish on artificial lures. Most of these were on Sebile Stick Shadds, and a few were taken on soft plastics and Berkley Fusion bucktail jigs.

We caught some very solid river snapper and lost a few of these tough fighting fish as well. The ones that we lost were to being cut off on sharp rocks below the water. These fish have a PHD in finding structure to cut your line off once hooked, and proved a real handful. It was always with a sense of relief when we slid one into the net. The 72mm and 90mm suspending Stick Shadds proved to be irresistible to these toothy predators. In fact those lures were so productive that my guest angler immediately ordered 20 on his return home after the trip.

The river was also teeming with bigeye kingfish and GT’s. These could be seen swimming in shoals near the surface of the river, making bow waves as they headed into the current. Casting a Stick Shadd in front of the lead fish generally resulted in chaos, with fish smashing at the lure and then chasing the hooked fish around, as they attempted to steal the lure from its mouth.

We also caught kob, shad, grunter (two on Stick Shadds), sea pike, longnose kingfish, river bream, gurnard etc.