Mark 'Rocky' Rochfort, the operater of Shorefire Charters on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, hosted Japanese anglers Matsutani (ex Seven Seas custom tackle manufacturers, now Patriot Design) and Yasuda for a week's mainly jigging around the tiny Australian external territory, 2600km northwest of Perth. It was a week of big fish, gun anglers and a wealth of experience gained by all...

Matsutani with possibly the most impressive capture of the trip - a 50kg+ bigeye tuna, taken deep jigging with PE6 line.

Christmas Island is surrounded by extremely deep water, and is a magnet for giant trevally, wahoo, yellowfin and bigeye tuna, and of course the favourite target for Japanese jig anglers, dogtooth tuna. These guys put heart, soul and a lot of calories into fast, aggressive jig action, and the results speak for themselves. Several dogtooth over the 100lb mark were brought to boat, mostly caught on 200g - 250g jigs and PE6 line.

Rocky made particular mention of the extreme pressure these guys were willing to put on with braid that most anglers would fish with a measure of reservation; the anglers went hard and stopped the big fish in remarkably short time, with very few tackle losses. They were obviously very much in touch with the limits of their tackle.

"The jigs were all the same shape and all small but heavy 200 - 250g. Blues and white/silver worked much better than anything else. Best depths were 100-150m with jigs dropped to the bottom and worked as quickly as humanly possible with an action of winding down to horizontal, a massive jerk up to the vertical and then gather the line as quickly as you can on the downstroke, repeating over and over all the way to the top. Who does it the fastest catches the biggest fish. Matsutani, the guy with the big tunas, is like a machine, he just doesn't stop. He did get smoked by what I believe to be a much larger Big Eye. At first as it was lost he said “leader cut" but as he got to the end of the line we saw a broken bimini. He was in shock!  “First time broken PE line, very sorry captain!". He only uses PE6 for jigging insisting it puts the best action on the jigs. He has only recently moved up from PE5. The amount of pressure he puts on PE6 is something to see. Bimini only 35 twists; I told him I use 70 and he took it on board. The leader was 200lb fluorocarbon, three metres or so in length."

A big dogtooth from a small boat: Matsutani tries to hoist a tank of a fish for the camera.

Smaller species were also about, with yellowfin tuna, black trevally, ruby snapper, red bass, coronation trout and bluefin trevally hitting jigs or poppers. The anglers also spent some time working poppers and stickbaits in the “shallows" (which on Christmas Island means the thin strip around the cliffs that is less than about 70m deep); and Rocky is now very much a fan of the biggest of stickbaits, reporting that the surface strikes on the big sticks were outrageously spectacular, and usually resulted in the biggest of GTs.

Rocky's comment: “I've never seen surface strikes as awesome as when the big GTs went for that big black stick."

The anglers preferred PE8 for popping. Matsutani lost his biggest stickbait in an ignominous way unfortunately, when he couldn't resist throwing it at a bg shark that was cruising around the boat during a jigging session. The shark won.

Yasuda shows off a typical Christmas Island GT, taken on a blooper fitted with a single tail treble.

Rocky was very impressed with these anglers and the effort they were willing to put into working the jigs and poppers. They certainly got the results they deserved, and happily they're keen to get back to Christmas Island for more 'tackle testing'.

Big, black GTs seem to be a more regular occurrence at Christmas Island than most places. This one was tempted by the big stickbait in the backgound.

One of the great things about fishing at CI is that you can literally fish dawn to dusk -and even a little longer if you want, if the skipper isn't too worn out! Some of the best fishing is within five minutes of the launching ramp, and in fact some of the very largest tuna, wahoo and trevally have been taken within sight of the ramp. 

Rocky made some observations on the technique, as you do when you're skippering guys who are indisputably amongst the best in the world at this sport. “Not much different in the way I use a popper or stickbait, other than to say that the bigger the stickbait, the bigger the GT. Stickbaits worked with more of a twitch than a sweep. A pause every now and then is also important."

Rocky's final word on the week: “They want to come back to Christmas Island ASAP, Matsutani saying he has many ideas of new things to try. Can't wait!"