Fishing in Papua New Guinea

I spent last weekend in PNG again. With the wife this time. We went to wish my friend a very happy 40th birthday! Our flight out was on Saturday morning at 6am arriving in Port Moresby at 12.30pm. We were there for 2 full days and flew back on Monday morning leaving Port Moresby at 6.30am, arriving back in Melbourne at 2.30pm!

Our first day was spent chilling and drinking a few beers before heading to the party on the ‘Kulasi‘ (see previous posts). As is not unusual with my mate, there was way too much food and drink than was needed. The night faded fast and the next thing I knew, we were on a wild ride home!

Up at 8am on Sunday morning, we boarded the Taikoo 3 (a replacement for the now defunct Taikoo 2 which ran aground on a coral reef) and headed 30 miles south down the coast to a place called Gabba Gabba Village. Turning west when we arrived, we cut through the reef and then trawled our way back up the outside. Within minutes of dropping our lines in, Mr L from Cairns was fighting a beautiful trevally which he had on deck within 3 minutes. Three hours later, we’d had no more bites so we decided a dive was in order instead.

Wow! We dived on the wreck of the Pacific Gas and it was by far the best dive I have done in PNG! The viz was amazing, the fish life magnificent. I saw the biggest moray eel that I have ever seen in my life. It would have had a cross-sectional diameter of about 30cm! It just stood there, upright on the deck, with its mouth opening and closing. I suddenly wished that I had brought my underwater camera with me! After 15 minutes of floating between 30m and 40m down, it was time to head back to the surface. We did a 3 minute deco stop before surfacing.

By now the wind had picked up and the ride back was bumpy.

Below is a short video of our only catch of the day.