Wrestling With Samsons

samsons
Wrestling With Samsons
Peter Morse goes west in search of samsons.
issue one
aug-oct 06
In Western Australia in particular, samson fish
represent perhaps the best opportunity for
Australian fly fishers to consistently tangle with
seriously big, hard fighting fish (outside the billfish
family of course). What one fly fisher calls big
another might call ‘bait’, but with samsons there’s
no confusing exactly what ‘big’ is. When first
confronted by the sight of a pack of samsons even
a seasoned fly fisher will go ‘wow!’, let alone the
reaction from those who’ve never seen fish this
size before. The first sight of a big samson can
have you picking yourself up off the deck, and the
thought, ‘Am I supposed to land that on fly gear?’
crosses your mind. That had certainly been my
reaction a few years ago when
Craig ‘Noddy’ Radford first
bought one to the surface on jig
tackle off metropolitan Perth.
Samson fish (Seriola hippos)
are members of the trevally tribe
– carangids for the scientists.
Their closest relations are the
other Seriolas - amberjacks and
yellowtail kingfish are kissing
cousins. Few fish families carry
a more fearsome, thuggish,
fighting reputation than this gang.
samsons
The first sight of a big samson can have you picking yourself up off the deck,
and the thought, ‘Am I supposed to land that on fly gear?’ crosses your mind.
They can be a kilometre long and forty meters
deep. Jig fishers have exploited this fishery
over the last few years and it is unquestionably
the major tackle testing ground for heavy duty
spin gear in the world – it is brutal, with some
experienced and hardened jig fishers landing
(and releasing) over 30 fish a day with an average
weight somewhere around 24 kilos.
Shattered rods and seized reels litter the decks of
charter boats. For a fly fisher to exploit this deep
fishery requires good weather, heavy tackle, and
techniques that are just a little outside IFGA rules,
but sometimes you do what you have to do.
Not quite wthin IGFA rules...
Unconventional tactics were
needed to drop flies 100 metres
down into the feeding zone.
Books will tell you samsons
have a known upper weight
limit of 57 kilos but fish larger
than 60 kilos have been
regularly recorded, particularly
from Perth’s offshore summer
spawning aggregations
in recent years.
This aggregation is truly
massive. The size of the
schools of mature fish that
congregate in several places
off the coast, in particular west
of Rottnest Island, is almost
incomprehensible.
issue one
aug-oct 06
samsons
SPAWNING AGGREGATION TACTICS
From a fly tackle perspective these spawning
fish are in very deep water, well beyond the
normal limits of fly fishing and sixty meters is
about as shallow as they come. The average
depth they’re found in is around 100 meters and
this is a major hurdle to overcome. To get the fly
down to a fishable depth you need minimal drift,
but a windless day off Perth in summer is a rare
event. The fastest sinking line you can find (Rio’s
tungsten dredger shooting heads worked well
for us), matched with a big fly loaded in the head
with solder wire and tungsten putty is just the
beginning. To get to where the fish are you also
need to strip backing off the reel, and to avoid
having this lying around on deck (a disaster just
waiting to happen) you need to use the reel to
retrieve the backing - it’s far from classic fly fishing.
It’s a long process and we did it successfully off
Perth in early 2006; not only see if we could get
a hookup, but also to see if the tackle we were
using was capable of lifting these fish from those
depths. Several of us used a prototype Sage 16
weight mounted with a Tibor Gulfstream, and to
our great surprise (and that of the other anglers and
deckies) found we were landing fish almost as easily
as the jig guys using geared reels spooled with 80lb
braid on short stroker spin rods. Noddy dropped
deep berley cages packed with chopped pilchards
and whether it was coincidence or not, the best
bite period and the shallowest the fish showed on
the sounder was when we were berleying at our
hardest and the wind was at its lightest. As far as
we’re concerned we caught fish so the system had
some merits. This success piqued our curiosity:
could we catch big samsons outside this spawning
aggregation and in shallower water?
SAMSONS ELSEWHERE
Tag returns post-spawning indicate most of the fish
off Perth head south once spawning is completed
(usually by late February) and
many excellent captures come
from the waters off Bunbury
right around into the Great
Australian Bight. The movement
and mix of the population of fish
has not yet been determined
because north of Perth they
are also thick, but tagged fish
off Perth have not shown up in
those waters.
issue one
aug-oct 06
Solder wire and tungsten putty helped sink flies into the strike zone.
These northern fish are
accessible in many places, in
big numbers, and in reasonably
shallow water along that band
The Abrolhos Islands are
stark and windswept with
a rich history of shipwrecks
and commercial fishing. This
crayfish village was our base
for week. We launched from
here every day to chase huge
samson fish from the back of
Nat Gedero’s commercial cray
boat.
of ancient reef that begins at Rottnest Island
and continues all the way to North West Cape. It
seems this may be a different population though.
Samsons are considered a poor eating fish and
many WA fishers go out of their way to avoid
them. Because there is also no commercial fishery
for them numbers on even close reefs remain
good. Subsequently though there’s a lack of
information, which doesn’t assist in joining the dots
on distribution, locations, likely structure, and of
course tactics. Its known by a few that many of
the reefs and structure north of Perth holds good
samson populations. The wreck of the oil rig ‘Key
Biscayne’ has been exploited by Perth based fly
fishers Kev Holt, Tony Cranstoun and mates for
some time. There are plenty of small towns along
the coast from Perth to Kalbari, that because of
the prodigious inshore reefs are all potentially good
‘samson ports’ for small boat fishers.
samsons
THE SAMSON
MOTHERLODE
The Abrolhos Islands off
Geraldton seems to be pretty
much at the heart of this
northern samson fishery.
This very large group of
low, windswept islands and
enormous reef complexes is
a wild part of the world with a
rich history of shipwrecks and
commercial fishing. The edge of
the continental shelf is only eight
miles from the outer reef and
warm oceanic currents sweep
the group. Tailor and mackerel
co-exist, as do spangled
emperor and pink snapper.
It’s a huge source of crayfish
and several of the islands have
seasonal crayfishing villages on
them. Only residents and a few
guests can stay on the islands.
I visited the islands in April 2006
with Noddy as guests of Nat and Greta Gedero.
Nat’s a second generation Abrolhos cray fisher and
Greta’s from Sweden. Nat’s father was one of the
very first to set up a camp out in the islands in the
early 1950’s and we stayed in the original shack his
father had built.
Nat runs a commercial cray boat so our fishing had
to fit in with work, but he’s also a very keen fly fisher.
At first light we were on the inside of the outer reef
as the pots started coming aboard and the boxes
of live crays slowly filled. The old baits were tossed
over the side and bronze whalers surged and
swirled in the morning light to snatch them.
Abrolhos crayfish
issue one
aug-oct 06
samsons
Noddy with Abrolhos bycatch - a
superb WA snapper.
competition to get them up
on top and fighting over the
scraps. Some pots had fish
and some didn’t, it depended
on how close they were to
reef. Suddenly from one pot
we had samsons everywhere,
big ones, massive ones, half a
dozen of them. The big rods
came out; two huge flies hit the
water almost simultaneously for
instantaneous hook ups – mine
busted on the strike and Noddy
came back with half a shooting
head – not a good start. ‘Don’t
worry, the others will follow us to
the next pot’ said Nat.
‘No Kingies (samsons) out here’ said Nat. ‘Wait
until the last twenty inshore pots, that’s when
we’ll have them up thick’. With the first forty pots
cleared and re-set we move into the calmer,
shallower waters sheltered by Wallabi Island to
check and reposition a further sixty pots.
The bottom was clearly visible and when the
first pot came up there were flashes of pink
and blue down deep as big snapper grabbed
the discarded baits. The next twenty or so pots
had fish in attendance and we caught some big
snapper. Then suddenly, from nowhere, we had
two big samsons around the boat; our first eye
to eye encounter with 20 kilo fish on the surface.
The water was only 5 meters deep and coral reef
was all around us. ‘If you want to lose a fly line go
ahead’ said Nat. I made a cast and the fly was
instantly inhaled, but the fish turned and came
straight back under the boat before I had a chance
to set the hook and it fell out.
issue one
aug-oct 06
Noddy and I had strung up 11 weight rods for
the snapper with fast sinking lines and smaller
flies. Nat told us small flies would help avoid the
samsons and pin the ‘snaps’. We also had very
heavy rods rigged and ready with big flies; a 16
weight Sage and a 17 weight Cam Sigler, both
loaded with Tibor Pacific reels and 850 grain
Rio tungsten dredger lines – we weren’t here to
avoid the samsons, we were here for battle. There
were more glimpses of them down deep as they
grabbed the sinking baits but there wasn’t enough
We frantically re-rigged from a prepared stash
of jumbo flies left over from other big fish trips. It
seemed that if you thought your fly wasn’t going
to be big enough it probably wasn’t, and if you
thought it was going to be too big, well, it wouldn’t
be. There was about two minutes between pots.
Noddy simply tied a surgeon’s loop on the front
end of his remaining fly line and we both had a
supply of leaders ready rolled. On the way to
the next pot half a dozen more samson’s joined
the pack swimming under the boat - now there
would be competition. We could see fish waiting
in the shadow of the boat as the pot came up.
‘Shit! They’re huge!’ I said to Noddy. ‘Yep!’ he
replied, grinning mischieviously. ‘Smack the fly
down hard as the old baits hit the water’, called
Nat from the wheelhouse. A big silicon headed
fly tied on a 10/0 hook hit the water with an
audible splat, samsons surged from the shadows
of the boat and broad grey shoulders launched
from the water in a welter of spray.
With this first round of hook ups we began three
days of unbelievably intense big fish fly fishing.
It’s hard to imagine in this day, with depleted
oceans and fish stocks pummelled from all sides,
that you could encounter so many massive fish
in just a few hours of fishing each day. Most fly
fishers might be fortunate to encounter one or
two fish such as these in a lifetime. There were
many highlights, incidents, and countless lessons
learned. This was an astonishingly brutal and
instructive course on knots, rigs and fish fighting
techniques. You wouldn’t dare pull out anything
heavier than a 10kg tippet in Noddy’s presence;
he’s a stickler for IGFA line classes so that was
what we fished with even though they’re not a
recognised IGFA species. Rio IFGA Hard mono
was my choice. The crucial connection from class
tippet to shock tippet (at first a uni knot) failed me
twice as I battled to keep these fish from gaining
the reef. I changed to a triple turn surgeon’s knot
and that connection did not fail again.
We were fishing with Tibor Pacific reels, not for the
backing capacity, but for the huge retrieve rate and
the massive amount of drag you can apply through
them. Both rods had been tested before the trip
and we knew they were capable of breaking 10
samsons
On many occasions we copped a pummelling. Picture on of those early black
and white movies of a bare knuckle boxing match with the two heavyweights, a
blacksmith and a wharfie, going toe to toe for as many rounds as it took to finish
the job.
kilo tippets and we thought we knew how far we
could and couldn’t go.
On many occasions we copped a pummelling.
Picture one of those early black and white movies
of a bare knuckle boxing match with the two
heavyweights, a blacksmith and a wharfie, going
toe to toe for as many rounds as it took to finish
the job, neither gaining the upper hand, neither
prepared to give in and neither able to land a really
decisive blow and you have the broad picture of
how it felt.
It was mostly shallow water and the bottom was
visible, you could usually see the bommies the fish
were heading for. They also had a nasty tactic of
diving back under the boat and their first run was
Atrocious table manners made for superb surface
strikes - until you realised the samson was only ten
metres from freedom and heading straight for it.
issue one
aug-oct 06
samsons
When big fish take flies with such ferocity so close to the boat your
gear and knots better be good.
10
long and hard in that direction. With full drag on
you strained just to hang onto the rod to keep the
tip under the boat to stop it fatally bending around
the chine. Just to just get one hand free to back
off the drag was fraught with danger. There were
many white knuckled moments spent bent right
over the gunwales with bare toes barely gripping
the deck, moments that teetered on the edge of
a graphite-shattering disaster. We soon learned to
back off the drag the instant they headed in that
direction and this worked - sometimes. The need
for a serious big game lever drag fly reel suddenly
became a reality.
But we also won plenty of rounds. The best
fish of the trip was a massive samson Noddy
landed. The crew declared it was the biggest
they’d seen landed on ANY tackle. Our estimate
put it at over 100 old fashioned pounds, a truly
phenomenal capture on fly tackle and a testament
to Noddy’s great fishing skills honed over many
years of subduing big fish on heavy fly rods. A
great personal moment came when I busted off
a fish on the 16 weight and picking up the 11
weight because it was rigged, and landed a 25
kilo samson. We landed others over 40 kilos and
the average size was somewhere around 25 kilos.
That’s very, very serious fly fishing.
issue one
aug-oct 06
Extreme polaroiding...
samsons
There was no time for a full re-rig,
the next pot was only minutes away, so
it was a bimini double in the gelspun
backing, double that with a surgeon’s
loop, then double that again to give a
secure eight strand loop.
all the re-rigging process but on looking up could
see a big bommie 60 meters away - exactly where
the fish was heading.
With the really brutal tactics we had to use,
most fights were won or lost within ten minutes.
When we had a bust off lessons were learned
and rectified where possible. Sometimes it was
correctable but much of the time it was just
general attrition - a fifty pound braided loop wore
through, a spool of brittle old 10 kg tippet material
cost a few fish before being discarded, they took
us around cray pot ropes, fly lines were cut off on
the reef and Noddy broke several 10 kg tippets
through the Cam Sigler 17 weight before learning
to back off.
I’ve always considered it less of a defeat to bust
off a fish heading for cover by going as hard as the
tackle will handle to prevent the fish from making it
to cover, than it is to be buried. So I wrung another
half turn of drag out of the Pacific. The fish slowed
and turned short of the coral. Some line was
cranked back on the reel, a few turns - it went again
and must have turned only a meter short. It had
put everything into reaching the reef and was duly
landed. It was a great note to finish on and I think
gave the anglers a slight points decision.
There were many great lessons learned from these
torrid encounters - how important not just good
knots are, but great knots, just how much pressure
you can put through a properly bent fly rod, the need
to ‘ride the drag’ and to never give these fish an even
break because they won’t ever return the favour. But
mostly I think we learned to not be intimidated by the
size of the fish and the country they were in. A faint
heart never won a battle such as this.
11
On our last afternoon, on the last half a dozen
pots when the bite was at its frenzied best, we
both lost shooting heads and running lines. There
was no time for a full re-rig, the next pot was only
minutes away, so it was a bimini
Craig Radford playing tug-of-war with the locals. Correct rod work is
double in the gelspun backing,
essential to even have a chance with these bruisers.
double that with a surgeon’s
loop, then double that again to
give a secure eight strand loop
- casts weren’t long so no need
for a running line. We simply
looped on a pre-rigged Rio T14
head straight to the gsp and
back into the action. The gang
was all there and still ravenously
hungry and competitive. ‘Splat’,
the flies hit the water and a big
fish estimated at 30 odd kilos
launched itself onto mine.
I hadn’t looked around through
issue one
aug-oct 06
samsons
Neptune cradles the bulk of a huge samson wrestled to the boat by the author.
Samson fish are a wonderful
species for fly fishers looking
to tangle with something big.
They eat big things and they
certainly aren’t a fashionable
fish, at least not until now. In
places teasing tactics will be
needed to bring them up out
of deeper water and that can
be a quest. Because of their
poor eating quality they seem
destined to be around for some
time and represent the best
opportunity for fly fishers to
experience white knuckle battles
with things capable of busting
anything but the finest rigged
tackle, of destroying inferior
reels, and shattering badly bent
graphite rods. I can’t recommend
a round or two with a gang of
bad tempered samson fish highly
enough.
Samson fish are a wonderful species
for fly fishers looking to tangle with
something big. They eat big things and
they certainly aren’t a fashionable fish, at
least not until now.
12
issue one
aug-oct 06
Craig Radford manages on his own, but only just...these were serious fish.