By Christian

Going to the Maldives in November: Rolf, who has been fishing there for years was sure that it would be a good time to go as well. The excitement for us newbies, Sven and me, was on its peak, when we arrived in the capital Male. The weather was good and Ubey, the owner of three boats was awaiting us at the airport. One of the boats, the MAS HIBARU was going to be our home and fishingplatform for the next two weeks. Ubey brought us to the boat and gave us last instructions before we took of. The trip took us to the northern atolls. We got our equipment ready and started trolling with two rods, however without success. The next thing was some relaxing after the long flight. After a quiet night we started easy with some jigging with moderate success, then we started our six hour trip to the Baa- and Raa Atoll. After our arrival, we were right in the middle of our fishing grounds, and started throwing poppers like hell. The Giant Trevallies were awaiting us, because they greeted our poppers with brute force. We caught GTs up to 28 kg. Some of the bigger ones, Rolf guessed them over 40 kg, followed our poppers but we did not get a bite. The strenght of the GTs surprised me a lot. As a freshwaterangler I knew only carps and catfish. Even the small “giants” put everything that I ever experienced before to shame. When our arms got to heavy from fighting fish we started to troll a bit. We did not get a lot of action from that, but great joy from our first Wahoos and Dogtooth Tuna. Then we went to the Shaviyani-Atoll. An arising storm forced us to go back to the Miladhunmadulu-Atoll. To escape the strong wind, we went to the eastern side at the lee of the wind towards the Lhaviyani-Atoll. The Lhaviyani-Atoll is the home of our skipper Ibrahim. He knows the water like no one else and the fishing was not that good because of the weather he recommended to fish with life bait on sailfish. This was a good advice. First nothing happened, but then after about an hour my friend Sven got a bite, at the same moment my line started to run, which was why we first thought that the fish swam into my rig and took it with him. Then Svens fish turned left and my rig turned right we knew it: “Doublestrike”! That was why Sven got into the panga with his rod to fight the Sail from there. I stayed on the MAS HIBARU. What an experience. After a long and exciting fight with light tackle we were able to land two very big Sails in the end. In the evening we were invited into Ibrahims home. There we let the impressions of the last days pass. Sadly we realised that our trip would end soon. The last days went by like a dream. But the sore muscles and nice pictures on our cameras were proof that it was not just a dream. We decided to return as soon as possible to this “paradise”. (Annotation of the editor: Christians first experience with tropical fishing was so lifechanging, that he returned in December)