A month ago, I visited a new spot in San Antonio, Zambales area. The location is a fishing village and a few tourist resorts sprouted on it’s shoreline. A few kilometers from the shore, there you will find Capones and Camara Islands, and on a clear day you can see the clear white sands and tropical blue waters. Tourists are frequenting the place to bask at the secluded island beach merely a few hours drive from manila.

Capones and Camara Islands

I was led to Pundaquit not because of it’s crystal blue waters nor it’s white sand beaches… it was because of one thing.. GAMEFISH!!! hehehe..

It has been quite a while since I last felt a strong tug and heard the scream of my reel. JL’s 12kg Yellow Fin Tuna and Alan’s trip two weeks ago that landed him a 12kg specimen sent me itches that were almost unscratchable. So.. week of being a “good husband” earned me a go signal from the general wifey to fish on Oct. 11. I boarded Victory Liner’s last trip to Zambales and arrived at San Antonio around 3:00. I grabbed a quick bowlful of lugaw (yung totoong lugaw ha) then headed off to Megan’s Resort on a tricycle. Initially, JP and JL intended to go with me. But JP did not confirm and JL came with his CiC so I ended up fishing alone.

My boatman, Mang Randy, and I were already set to leave at 4:30am, but it was too dark to set sail. Several boatmen were on the shore as well, probably waiting for a hint of sunrise on the horizon. And just like clock work, four of them stood up all at the same time and went to their boat. The other boatmen immediately followed as well. Randy decided not to go with the flow, so to speak, it will be hard to troll rapalas in the dark and having a risk of getting tangled with other boatmen trolling fresh bait. That decision have blown my chances of getting a blue marlin, as there were alleged reports that a 20kg marlin was caught that morning.

The morning troll was quite uneventfull, no strikes, nothing. I was changing lures from skirts to plugs, I was even looking for signs of tuna pods but nothing as well. There were a good number of boats on trolling the area and it seems that it made the fish finicky. I told the boatman to troll further southwards and he asked me if I wanted to go to Anawangin Cove. I’ve heard that Anawangin was a nice place to visit so I readily agreed.

We took a short break from trolling and stayed at Anawangin Cove. It is a few kilometers from Pundaquit town and frequented by tourists because of the pine tree lined shore, ash white beach and crystal clear waters. I took a few pictures or the place for safekeeping.

Right before lunch, we were back to the place where the locals were trolling during the morning. This time, I used my champion lures, the sardine colored Storm Deep Thunder 11 and a Blue Mack Storm Deep Thunder 15. These were the first two lures I bought and on it’s first outing, it caught me a king mack and a trevally (read the 1st FilipinoAnglers.Org Fishing Trip )

I had a short strike on the Deep Thunder 15, I grabbed the rod and tugged the line to see if the fish was alreay there and then… the shimano reel on the other rod screamed for what seems like an eterenity. I dropped the rod that I was holding and reached for the other rod. YES!!! FISH ON… BROTHER!!! It was still doing it’s sprint when I got to the rod, and the fish fought well. The three times it moved it closer to the boat, it peeled off meters of line. It surrendered to the gaff on the fourth try.

We trolled again.. and I noticed that my rod tip didn’t have that rythmic pulse so I presumed that it snagged on something. As I retrieved it, sure enough, I was dragging a big piece of kelp. As it moved closer I noticed a silvery white flash and I said.. mukhang may isda. And yeah.. there was a fish on the hook with the kelp.. hehe.. it was a small wahoo.. around 1/2 kg or so. It was still alive so placed it back in the water.

The sea was starting to get rough so we decided to have lunch at Capones Island. We took our dandy time since I as letting the slack tide pass. We continued trolling at 3:00pm. We went around the camara island and instructed the boatman to troll near shore. At around 4pm my Penn 309 gave out short scream. I though it was garbage again as we were snagging garbage the a few times. Then it screamed with three short bursts… ALRIGHT, FISH ON!!! i Yanked on the rod to set the hook and the fish fought back with a really strong tug then silence…. the rod was still heavy and I thougth that i’ve lost the fish. As the line came near the boat.. i noticed a rather large shiny object looming below, my boatman shouted “talakitok… malaking talakitok!” Gaffing the fish didn’t give any sweat as well…

That fish felt different.. I caught a Trevally before of that size and it sure gave a hell of a fight, but this one.. didn’t. I guess we were shallow water and it didn’t have enough space to swim down.

Here’s another photo with both trophies.