Yellow Fin Tuna

Fishing in Southern Oman

The original plan was to go popper fishing for giant GTs around the Hallaniyat Islands with “GT-Angler-Oman”. Unfortunately, the water temperature had risen in places to over 30°C and the GTs had gone into hiding. During the couple of weeks before our arrival very few had been caught and some boats hadn’t caught any at all.

This meant going for plan B. During the months between February and June large schools of dolphins and yellowfin tuna migrate along the coast of southern Oman. We decided to try popper fishing for tuna in the area between Mirbat and Sadah. On the very first day the sea was calm and we managed to catch 4 tuna weighing up to 55 kilos – in total we had 7 tuna strike our lures.

On the second day the wind had picked up during the morning so we were unable to put to sea bevor noon, yet we still had 11 strikes and plenty of action, finishing up with 9 tuna which were all released.

Day three dawned with calm seas but no sign of the dolphins and tuna. We tried blind casting towards spots that looked promising but with only moderate success.

Fishing for GTs along the coast was on the programme for the next two days. We targeted some really promising spots with hundreds of casts until the sun finally set, regrettably to no avail – not even a GT tracking a lure. We spent the night in a tent on a lonely beach which enabled us to set off at 5 o’clock the next morning with the sun just about to rise, again in search of the elusive GTs. With the very first cast and still in almost complete darkness we had a hook-up with a specimen weighing some 25 kilos which is small by Omani standards. We fished the top spots along the coast for the rest of the day without getting another bite.

On day 6, the last day of our trip, we tried our luck with the tuna again and had a conciliatory conclusion with a fine specimen taken in the early morning. On this extremely hot day another 8 tuna tracked our lures, some of them really big ones, but with water surface temperatures of 31°C they were not really interested in attacking our poppers. A few were caught by commercial fishermen at depths of between 50 and 80 metres but after our initial success in the early morning there was no further action on the surface. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining, action-filled and very hot day. On several occasions we got our fly-fishing tackle out and caught bonitos and a few mosquito fish.

Summary:

We finished our trip with a total of 14 yellowfins. The largest one that week was a tuna caught by a commercial fisherman which weighed a stunning 113 kilos. The next trip is already being planned but this time purely for fly-fishing – stay tuned.

Weitere Infos zur Lodge und der Fischerei: www.gt-angler-oman.com

Tight Lines
Stephan Kreupl, May 2019