Papaun Spot tail bass

Spot tail bass. To be honest I didn’t know about these creatures until stumbling my way up some remote rivers on the island of new Britain, PNG

the further we explored , the more of this fish we found, in particular, one river was absolutely littered with them, at every snag, moving in big schools, darting past and creating smiles to everyone on board.

these fish love lures!
I was locked on using a small 90mm vibe , after witnessing a lot of fish come from depth, so my theory was to cast as close I could to snags dropping the lure down the face of structure and slow and sharp little jolts – literally dangling the lure in front of the fish heads.

It is a dangerous game as losing lures on snags and potentially roughing up the snag once you’ve hooked onto it, are factors I’ve witness shutting down a hang.. this was 100% the risk I love to take.

as soon as you feel any touch, wether it’s a bump of a fish , a log , stick, tree, grass, I immediately lift the rod tip back up twice , two little rises and drop down again, for me the most fun I can have working a lure , all about the touch.

These fish , LOVED it.
Time after time I got hits , whacks and rod bent and they are agressive. I would go to say similar to a mangrove jack strike, with the immediate run back into the snag technique.

I couldn’t believe the numbers of these fish. The water coming off the land was super clear – we tried to fish rivers that hadn’t been affected by logging , and the differences were astounding. The clarity of the water was insane and you could see schools of fish swimming around moving up and down in most the hangs we fished , pretty sure the count for our boat was high 60s in a 3 hour explore up a river we had never laid eyes on before !

happily sharing the stoke with others on the boat, I gave our tour guide Niel a fish and the fella got so excited catching his first ever spot tail deep in the jungles in PNG.

these are memories I will NEVER forget.