No Boundaries Reef Raiders 2015

Reef Raiders 2015 - words by JC, photos by the entire crew

Reef Raiders - the annual season opener for No Boundaries Oman has been done and dusted. It was awesome to get the call up again to fish with a gun crew of keen top water anglers from around the globe, this year it was a strong Aussie contingent.

Anglers: Mark Harris (Indonesia), Andre Van Wyk (South Africa), Jonny Pace (Australia), Eric Le Guyader (France), Lydia Low (Australia), Ed Nicholas (Oman), Sam Colvin (Australia) and myself (oz).

Andre snuck into town a few days before the main group and headed out with Ed for the first trip of the season in the new boat - an identical 33 foot center console to the other two No Boundaries boats except with twin 200's - beast. The first day or two produced some stunning GT's for the guys including among other fish a 'standard 55kg' for Ed and a personal best at 45kg for Andre - awesome start and congrats Dre on the PB!

With three boats now operating out of the No Boundaries stables a significant upgrade to the existing lodges has been completed including an extension to enable the extra guests - guests will be impressed and the lodge staff have taken it to the next level.

With the main group kitted up and keen as mustard to head out - unfortunately for the first two days we faced plenty of wind and stirred up seas but we pressed on, nothing a spray jacket will not fix! The fishing was typical Southern Oman early season, with a huge variety on offer. Big bream on the inshore washes along with spectacular diamond trevally and cob harassing the sardine balls and eager to hit a stick bait. Out at the islands the amberjack were rampant on the jig and made some good appearances on top water, solid fish among them as well with double and triple hook ups common and causing chaos. The reef brigade comprising the emperors, cod, groupers and Maori sea perch were ever resent and destroyed plenty of tackle, on PE3 these fish are beasts. The early season bluefish were in good numbers and big! These guys are an Oman highlight along with the light tackle specialists gold spot and black tip trevally. GT's are on or not and on our trip they were not particularly cooperative however two fish simply must be mentioned. Firstly Lydia managed a fine 34 kg GT that pushed her to the limit, impressive when you consider its 11 kg less than she weighs! Of significance however was the capture of a weighted 65 kg monster by Eric, a PB on his own lure after 20 plus years chasing such a fish, so deserving. It's great to hear a few weeks into the season that the GT's are now behaving and back to destroying tackle and egos. As always - let the photos do the talking.