We fished off Kota Kinabalu, Sabah from 27-30 April onboard a 68 foot traditional wooden boat. The sea was mirror calm & the water simply lovely. Fishing for Rubys was at 200m depths. Should have brought the electric reels; bad mistake. Manual reeling is no fun when just checking bait. Most of us used 50lb braided with minimum 300m of line. Definately not sufficient for Sabah. I would recommend 80lb braided with at least 600m of line on electric reels. The action was immediate every time we anchored at a new spot. But it faded away after 5 to 8 strikes. Then it's off to a new nearby spot again for a repeat of the action. We used apollo rigs in the day and rangongs at night. Strangely, night fishing wasn't productive at all for all 3 nights. The best fishing occurred in the early morning. That was the only period when everyone caught fish continually. By early afternoon, the action would have halved and eventually die off after twilight. One thing we were really disapointed with was the lack of good service. If it was a charter boat at Tg Pinang, Indonesia, the service by the crew would have been fantastic. Sadly, the crew onboard this boat were only interested in catching their own fish. And I must say, they were very good at that indeed. We practically did everything on our own, except the cooking & piloting of the vessel. Although, we laughed it off & put that to a different culture, I felt the crew could have done better. In any case, the fishing overall was satisfactory. I suppose going there once every couple of years would be good enough. I still prefer the fishing charters run by the Indonesians off Tg Pinang & Batam.
WF with one of many Angkolis
Tony with a 9kg Amber Jack caught at 120m
Raimi with an 8.5kg Amber Jack
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Ramesh with his first Angkoli caught at 98m
Jeffrey with the smallest fish he caught so far
WF with the first Ruby Red Snapper
A very nice eating Grouper
A 16kg Kaotoon caught on sardines
Adrian with a very scally fish, nick named, Durian
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