John Wilson - Hitting the big time

Readers may recall that several weeks ago I suggested a trip to the warmth of The Gambia to escape our winter climate and inconsistent fishing.

Well, I actually decided to take my own advice after my wife Jo hinted that she could do with a week in the Tropics.

It was great to meet up with skipper Mark Longster and Tracey Day, who picked us up from Banjul airport with the news that some jumbo-sized tarpon had been spotted in the mouth of the Gambia River.

We therefore decided as I enjoyed shark and heavy reef fishing on past occassions, to go for all or nothing and the outside chance hooking into a really big tarpon.

Now I must point out that Gambia has no ordinary river estuary.

It varies between 40 feet deep and close on 100 feet deep and is more than four miles wide at a spot called Dog Island, where the tarpon were showing in the late afternoon.

In fact, it looked no different from the Atlantic four miles off Banjul and so, due to strong winds for the first couple of days, we were restricted to trolling for barracudas in the mangrove creeks and bottom-fishing the inner reefs.

When the wind calmed down, we boarded Mark's 28ft Bayliner, having collected a good supply of live mullet and shad, and headed straight out to Dog Island in the early afternoon, anchoring where only a week before tarpon to 190lb had been landed from the lip of a 50ft gully that shelved down to 70ft within a 100 yards of our stern.

We put four 40-50-lb class rods out, fishing heavy leads on each with mullet or a shad presented just above the bottom with the aid of small cork balls, and sat back to wait for the screeching run of a tarpon.

After two hours, with not the slightest interest shown in out baits, Mark swapped one of the fish rigs over for what he called rack of shrimps averaging six or seven huge shrimps averaging six inches firmly threaded up the line concealing a size 6/0 hook. And within literally two minutes, they were grabbed, not a tarpon unfortunately, but a hard head catfish of around 40lb. That was it for that afternoon.

Within minutes of anchoring in the same spot the following afternoon, huge tarpon could be seen wallowing and crashing through the glass-like surface. They were all huge, between 100lb and 300lb- plus. And, as tarpon to 385lb have been taken in Gambian waters during recent years, some of these monsters could have surpassed even the 400lb mark.

I have never experienced such a spectacle of big fish before. Two hours later, tarpon were still all around the boat. So, to try to calm our nerves, we put a couple of 20lb outfits out, bait with shrimp, in the hope of breaking our duck with a few catfish. And it's not difficult to guess what soon followed. Yes, Mark's shrimp was swallowed by a huge tarpon which, after a few thump, to try to calm our nerves, we put a couple of 20lb outfits out, bait with shrimp, in the hope of breaking our duck with a few catfish. And it's not difficult to guess what soon followed. Yes, Mark's shrimp was swallowed by a huge tarpon which, after a few thumps under the boat when I'm sure it didn't know it was hooked, suddenly decided to veer away, ripping off more than 100 yards of line before it twice leapt high into the air, an unbelievable slight.

It was a monstrous fish, looking all of 200lb-plus, and we all cheered as it dived still connected to Mark's 20lb line. Close on 45 minutes later, having gone completely round the boat, the great fish was tiring and on the end of a short, but extremely frayed 20lb test line. Then the inevitable happened and our euphoria instantly ended with a loud crack!

Did we swear?

Is there the possibility of a world record tarpon being caught in The Gambia?

It's inevitable!