Myself and 4 mates headed to Vanuatu for a 5 day/4 night live on board adventure with Ocean Blue. We had a great trip aboard Bolero with Captain Eric Festa & our deckhand John. The first hook up of the trip was a 250kg blue within 1 hour of leaving Port Vila which was then bitten off by a wahoo. The next catch was a wahoo, shortly followed by a 50kg yellowfin tuna caught by Steve. After that we had a run of wahoo and mahi mahi until we hooked our 2nd blue at about 10:30am. After an hour and a bit Dasha caught the blue, which I tagged, estimated at around 800 pound. Before we could get all 4 lures back in the water Steve caught a blue which we tagged again estimated at 160kg. So we had 2 blues, 1 yellowfin, 3 Wahoo to 17kg & 5 mahi mahi to 13kg before lunch on the first day. The second day proved just as exciting and by the end of the day all 5 of us on charter had caught a blue marlin! (none of us had ever caught a billfish before). The 2nd day also saw Paul lose a 70kg yellowfin tuna, with the rest of us catching more dollys and wahoo. Day three we mainly fished for mahi mahi. Dasha caught a monster that ate a little yellowfin tuna, the mahi mahi weighed in at 22kg. On the fourth day Frank caught a 50-60kg sailfish which we tagged and another 3 blue marlin. On day 5 we thought we would have some light tackle fun so we used 15 and 24kg outfits for marlin. Steve caught the first on 15kg line. An 80kg blue tagged and released. I got the 2nd, an 80kg striped marlin on 24 tagged and released, both only took about 15 to 20 mins to tag. The tally from the trip was 18 marlin hook ups with 6 tagged blues, 1 tagged stripy and 1 tagged sailfish. One yellowfin tuna 50kg & one 70kg lost at boat. Lots of wahoo to 17kg and lots of mahi mahi to 22kg (lost track of numbers).

We would definitely recommend a trip with Ocean Blue any time! Compared with the same trip anywhere else in the world, Ocean Blue Vanuatu it is the most affordable for anglers like ourselves, and from our experiences the fishing was world class. We have been trying to catch Marlin on charter boats for 6-7 years with no success. Hopefully Ocean Blue can keep their trips affordable so that guys like us can fly to Vila and fish the exciting waters of Vanuatu. The people in Vanuatu are the nicest people we have ever met and they made our trip special when we returned to Port Vila. We will definitely be coming back next year!

Shane Jones