Brassy Trevally (Carangue Mouchetee) from New Caledonia

I'm currently in New Caledonia visiting my family in Noumea.

At the same time, it's a great opportunity to do some fishing as NC is very good for this sport. I took with me a YongSung Power Carbon Alpha 3.9m cargo iso rod.

First day catching 11 garfish with my mate Thai who came with us. This spot is a little jetty at 10 minutes walk from my parent's place.

We also went camping on a remote island not far from my place. What an experience. Lots of mosquitoes but it was so good to be with friends and family out there in the nature. We caught a bream and several fingermarks. The next early morning, we even spotted a shark not far from the shore.

The day Thai's left NC flying back to Sydney, I hooked up with a big fish on a metal slice but the 8lb line was too weak and my drag was too tight, so the line broke. On the second day I hooked up with another one but the fish spat put the soft plastic Kamikaze shad.

On the third attempt, it was a quiet start, it was 3 hours before low tide and the sky was well covered but not raining. I had bought a popper and more metal slice but it was so quiet that I decided to target smaller fish using a Gulp 3" prawn. I lost all my jigheads to the snags so ended up using a regular hook with two splitshots above it. No seagulls or jumping baitfish today, I was starting to doubt I would get any results today. But after 2 hours of persistance, something took my lure. I thought it would be a local grouper but it wasn't heading back to the rocks, instead it suddenly pull my line out to the depth. I could not stop it from going deeper and deeper. The fish just peeled my line from my Okuma Lebra (lever brake reel) 2500 spool which I've upgraded with some 15lb braid line as I didn't want to loose another fish.

After 7 minutes of fight, I managed to bring the fish to the surface, it was a Brassy Trevally of a very good size. Not wanting to take any risk of loosing it, I used my DIY landing net (potatoes net bag) I safely landed the fish.

This was the fishing spot (Port Moselle), I was standing at the corner of the rocky edge on the right.

The fish measured 66cm, but as it was cut at the throat, I think it's more or less 65cm.

I hope I will get the opportunity to get more fish like this before my return.

Hope you guys had a lovely Christmas, best wish for the last days of 2014!

Update:

The brassy trevally could actually be a young bluefin trevally