“Champagne, monsieur?” beamed the beautiful French air hostess with the thick, dark hair and chocolate brown eyes. “Aaah, oui… Merci,” I stammered in a woeful attempt at a French accent. In my mind’s eye I could see my old high-school French teacher shaking her head in embarrassment and exasperation. Smiling to myself, I gratefully accepted a glass of ice-cold bubbly and settled into my seat. I hadn’t felt this content and happy with the world for a long time –and who could blame me? After all, it was Christmas, a gorgeous lady was offering me free champagne and I was on the first leg of a journey which would ultimately lead to the best fishing of my life. Mention New Caledonia and most anglers’ thoughts immediately turn to images of palm trees, azure water and, of course, those silver rockets of the tropical flats – bonefish. Fly fishermen around the world drool
over New Caledonia’s bonefish fishery, and for good reason too. With fish in excess of 15 pounds on offer, the clear, shallow flats in the far north of the country provide exhilarating, albeit challenging, fishing for these oversized, turbo-charged whiting.
However, it wasn’t the lure of mega-bonefish that had me jetting my way across the Pacific to this delightful French colony, situated roughly half-way between Australia and Fiji. A quick squiz at the collection of huge surface lures in my tackle box and the brutal 50 pound spin stick in my rod tube would have alerted you to that fact. Instead of stalking mild-mannered bonefish on the fiats, I had a date with destiny at New Caledonia’s piscatorial bear pit – the northern barrier reef – trading blows with a motley collection of heavyweight lure-crunchers, including some truly gargantuan GTs.
The French Connection
I’d travelled to New Caledonia at the invitation of David and Rudy Boué-Mandil, a couple of super-keen local anglers. These affable young French blokes run Le Poisson-Banane, a professional guiding operation based out of Malabou in New Caledonia’s remote Northern Province, some four-and-a-half hour’s drive from the capital, Noumea. While they have the northern bonefish scene well and truly sussed (Rudy’s personal-best bone on fly is a 90cm, 15 pound honker!), they’re also adept at catching huge reef-dwelling critters on poppers and jigs. Judging by the casual way they reeled off the fish they’d recently caught, including GTs to 54 kg, coral trout to 20 kg (bloody hell!) and Spanish mackerel nudging 44 kg, I knew we were in for a memorable few days.
The drive from Noumea to Malabou passed quickly thanks to a constant stream of eclectic fishing stories told in an amusing mix of highly animated English and French. After settling into our Bungalows at the Malabou Beach Hotel we set about rigging our tackle for the morning session. On David and Rudy’s recommendation, I’d brought along the heaviest spinning outfit I could lay my hands on: a Stella 20,000 loaded with 80 pound braid and an Ian
Miller-designed 15-24 kg T-Curve spin stick. Serious gear–or so I thought. David ran his eyes over the rod, clicking his tongue thoughtfully as he gave it a couple of whippy practise casts. “A bit thin,” he said, pointing to the tip section of the blank. “Thin?” I repeated, a little puzzled. I glanced at the
rod, then back at David. Then the penny dropped – he thought my rod was too light. I couldn’t believe it. With a line-class rating of 24 kg, the T-Curve is a genuine mammoth-slayer. Surely it was more than adequate for a bit of bare-knuckled brawling with the local GTs? I guess we’d soon find out.
Battle Stations
The strike was visually perfect. One second my popper was gurgling its way across the surface, the next moment an enormous jet-black shadow materialised behind the lure, lifted its head and shoulders clean out of the water and completely engulfed the lump of painted wood. Seconds later, all hell broke loose. “Hold on!” yelled David, as I was dragged across the casting deck and slammed up against the bow rail. I was in serious trouble, and everyone on board knew it. In fact, if it wasn’t for David’s deckie, Ben, throwing his tree trunklike arms around my waist I may very well have disappeared over the side. Mercifully, the near-locked drag kicked in, as the GT-from-hell powered for the sanctuary of the reef. We’d scored a string of hefty trevally on poppers over the previous couple of hours, but this fish was clearly in a whole different league.
The next 15 or 20 minutes are a painful blur of backache and burning biceps, but somehow I prevented the GT from making it back to the reef, despite coming frighteningly close to being hauled overboard. By the time Rudy and Ben wrestled that enormous, coal-black slab of a fish aboard, I could barely muster a halfhearted, Homer Simpson-like ‘Woo-hoo’. I was completely and utterly exhausted, but quite possibly the happiest man alive. At well over 30 kilos, this was far-and-away the biggest GT I’d ever seen in the flesh, let alone caught. As I wearily set to work with the camera, David wasted no time in sticking the deck hose in the trevally’s cavernous mouth and pumping salt water through its gills. Big GTs are far too special to kill, so it was great to see the care and respect with which David, Rudy and Ben handled these magnificent fish prior to release. Their careful, conservative approach should go a long way toward ensuring the sustainability of this awesome fishery.
Round Two
Incredibly, less than half-an-hour later I was into the breach again, struggling to remain upright as another Volkswagen-sized GT powered into the depths like a nuclear submarine. Call me a pansy, but within five minutes I was begging for someone to take the rod off my hands. Running 15 kg of drag sounds wonderful in theory, but it’s ridiculously brutal, especially for lightweights like me! Indeed, with the exception of Natalie Grima, Kim Bain and perhaps Warren Steptoe, I can’t think of a Modern Fishing scribe who carries less meat on their frame than I do. Believe me, this was one occasion when I would have given anything for the anchor-man weight of someone like Dave Rae, Shane Mensforth or Hulk Hogan! Thankfully, Rudy reluctantly accepted the rod and set about getting the situation under control. Given we’d racked up eight or ten big GTs between us, plus an impressive assortment of red bass, coral trout, Spanish mackerel and barracuda, I was more than happy to sit back and let someone else land this fish. However, Rudy insisted I take the rod for the last 10 minutes of the battle. I’m glad he did because when the sweat, salt and spray eventually cleared, lying on the deck with my popper jammed firmly in its mouth was 35 kilos of the biggest, baddest GT I’d ever seen. It was the trevally of the trip – until Rudy trumped it 15 minutes later with an even bigger reef brawler estimated at close to 40 kg.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the incredible sound that fish made when it crunched Rudy’s lure off the surface, less than 10 metres from the rod tip. I still get goose bumps when I think about it. After carefully releasing Rudy’s fish, we decided to call it quits and head for home. There was barely a breath of wind as we powered through the reef pass into the oily-calm waters of the lagoon for the half-hour run back to shore. Overhead, flocks of terns dipped and wheeled as schools of small yellowfin and striped tuna blew up sporadically around us, but everyone was too tired and fished-out to bother having a cast. Without even realising it, a broad, dreamy smile crept across my face.
Popper Paradise
The reef systems offshore from Malabou form part of the spectacular New Caledonian Barrier Reef, the second longest barrier reef in the world – only our famous Great Barrier Reef is larger. Aside from the crystal-clear, turquoise-blue water and incredible diversity of marine life, what really blew my mind was the depth of water along the reef edge. In the blink of an eye it drops away from three or four metres down to 80 or 100 metres. Throw in an abundance of baitfish, plenty of current and a bit of foamy white water and it’s no surprise the place is crawling with an astounding variety of big, nasty fish, most of which can be tempted into belting a popper. Red bass were abundant and provided fantastic sport, as did coral trout – including a couple of boof-headed beasts around the 10 kilo mark. Green jobfish were always on the cards, barracuda were absolutely everywhere and several species of oversized cod regularly got in on the action and kept you honest. Half the fun stemmed from the fact that you never knew what you were going to hook next. Indeed, you were just as likely to pin a red bass or a GT as you were a yellowfin tuna or a Spanish mackerel.
Indelible Memories
It’s always dif? cult to nominate stand-alone highlights from a trip as memorable as this one, but for me, the GTs were a definite high point, as were the red bass. That said, an all-too-brief light tackle popper session inside the lagoon burns brightly in the memory bank. Catching jacks on plastics on the sand flats was right up there as well. Mind you, seeing Rudy sight cast to an 18 kg bull mahi-mahi cruising along the reef edge on the last day was pretty special – especially when he hooked the thing! He landed it too. Then there was the enormous groper which barrelled up from the depths and boofed a 12-15 kg GT that David was fighting. Indelible memories. While I only spent three days in the Northern Province, I’ve never felt more content, satisfied and utterly ?shed out at the end of a trip than I did when this one came to a close. I can’t recall how many fish we actually landed, but the fact that I returned home with blistered hands, an aching back and a big smile probably indicates that it was more than enough. And yet, according to David and Rudy, the fishing I experienced was nothing out of the ordinary and took place during less than perfect tide cycles. The mind boggles at the thought of what happens when the place really ?res.
Just Do It
No matter how much you’ve read about heavy tackle popper fishing, nothing prepares you for the real thing. Hurling a Coke bottle-sized lure over a reef edge and having it obliterated off the surface by a fish the size of a car bonnet will blow your mind. It’s something every angler should experience at least once in their lifetime before departing for the big weigh-station in the sky – and New Caledonia is quite possibly the best place on the planet to do it.
Le Poisson-Banane
Owned and operated by brothers, David and Rudy Boué-Mandil, Le Poisson-Banane offers fully-guided sport fishing trips to the remote, fish-rich reefs of New Caledonia’s Northern Province. David and Rudy specialise in heavy tackle popper fishing for big GTs, coral trout, red bass and Spanish mackerel.
However, they offer plenty of other angling options as well, ranging from deep jigging for huge dogtooth tuna, wahoo and yellowfin tuna, through to light tackle lure casting inside the reef lagoons for a diverse range of hardpulling, lure-crunching species. Big GTs are the real drawcard though, and few places in the world compare to New Caledonia in terms of size and abundance of these brutish fish. An average GT from these waters weighs around 20 kg, but David and Rudy’s clients regularly catch them between 30-40 kg… and bigger! New Caledonia is definitely one of the best places to visit if you want to catch a trophy-sized GT on popper. Don’t forget that New Caledonia’s Northern Province also offers spectacular fly fishing action for big bonefish, and David and Rudy are happy to customise trips for anglers who wish to split their time between poppering the reefs and stalking bones on the flats.
Story by Andrew Mayo - Modern Fishing Magazine
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