Bintulu Malaysia July 2015

My first experience to Southeast Asia left a memorable time and an appreciation to the light tackle and the micro jigging,
we get invited on this trip to Bintulu by Pin (Iron Man) from Malaysia to fish the oil rig offshore, the offshore rigs are well known to hold some monster GT’s and the fishing is mainly done at night time.

We took the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Bintulu where the rest of the group was waiting for us at the boat and then out to sea for 10 hours ride to reach our first destination,
we get there at night time and the first couple of drops was accounted for major hook up that resulted with cut off at the structure of the oil rig, we ended up retying our leader till the bite faded away and all the guys switched to light tackle targeting small fish, a lot of fun for the first night.

We moved to a different oil rig during the day and the results was good with none stop action, however most of the guys went to sleep to save their energy for the night time, the plan was to hit one of the biggest oil rig that normally hold big GT’s, the run to the second spot was close to 4 hours and at midnight we finally made it.

The first drop off resulted on a GT followed by another one, and the boys managed to pull 2 fish on the first drift, there was couple of solid hits resulted with cut off at the bottom structure of the oil rig.
It is very hard to manage to pull a fish out of the structure as most of the big GT ‘s are holding in 80 to 90 meters and right off the bottom near structure, I had some solid hook up but again no luck to land.
I recall that I retied my leader 3 times on 3 drops, we stayed close to 1 hour before we were chased by the security boat, so here goes the night and we ended up moving to a different rig with close to 4 hours to reach, a lot of travelling time in between.

On the last day most of the guys switched to micro jigging and they had constant action with a lot of variety.
at night we headed on a 4 hours run but it was slow and we could not get a bite till Pin get a huge strikes on the OBX 500, he put up a fight and an awesome bend on the rod but lost the fish close to boat side.

All this happen while the security boat is watching and ordering us to leave the premises, however they enjoyed the show and gave Pin a thumps up and a big cheer for the fight.
With the order we got from the security boat we end up leaving the premises and headed back to Bintulu,

It was quite an experience but I would not recommended for somebody that is coming from overseas,
in my opinion the time and the hassle is not worth the trip.
the positive feedback is that I meet a lot of new friends and I sure learned couple of new tricks, the light tackle and micro jigging open up my eyes and made me a believer, I am even considering expanding our lines of rods in the shop and promote the Micro Jigging on all our overseas trips in the future.
I would like to thank Pin for organizing the trip and the guys for their hospitality!
Tomorrow will take off to Indonesia to target GT’s and Dogtooth tuna and hopefully we will be a bit luckier…

  Tight lines

    Sami