A fishing expedition to Khadda / Continental Shelf

One always feels thrilled and excited when there is a plan to fish offshore especially to hunt giant Marlins and Tunas from the continental shelf/ Khadda.

For November 17, 2018 a trip to Khadda/ Continental Shelf was planned and we left for Sonehra at 8:30 pm with all the tackles needed for offshore fishing.

The best time to reach this spot is before sunrise but all your planning goes in vain when you do not reach the destination in time. It’s exactly like ‘snooze you loose’. The Sangari (another boat to accompany) was supposed to meet us at Churna by 12 am and from there both the boats had to depart together. The wait for our Sangari was too long and it reached after 3 am. By the time we left for Khadda, it was around 3:30 am. Wish we had departed earlier and reached the spot before sunrise and ultimately the game would be totally different. No one can stand against the will of God. He had another plan for us.

The weather turned very choppy and high wind started. We had a great difficulty in increasing the speed of our boat. With everything wet on the boat, we reached 50 mtr mark at around 9:30 am and started looking for the PODs while heading towards 123. By that time we had landed 2 Mahi mahi. At 3-4 different spots we came across big pins of Dolphins which swam along with our boat for quite a few minutes but there were no tunas chasing.

We got 2 strikes of small tuna but both got unhooked during retrieving.

At around 12:30 pm, we saw a Marlin coming from the opposite direction, we almost ran over it expecting it to bite our squirts at the back, but nothing happened. Then we took u turn and started chasing but it ran away like a bullet.

Overall it was a fun trip Alhamdulillah and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Anglers: A. Hameed Kath, Khizar Hameed,

Special thanks to my dear brother Arif Diver and his company for their great care and love.

Video/Photography by : Khizar H. Kath

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An Excited PoD and Our First Strike – Landed 3 Tunas

While searching, and searching finally came across an excited pin of dolphins and got our First Strike – Landed 3 Tunas successfully Alhamdulillah. !

 

 

I feel proud to catch a 111.33 lbs Blue Marlin.

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Some of you might know that I have been game-fishing for more than 20 years. By the grace of Allah, besides lots of various catches of different species of different sizes and weights, in 1995 I was also awarded a prize in TKO’95 (The Karachi Offshore’95) Angling Tournament for catching the heaviest King Mackerel (50 lbs).

 

During this entire journey, I have caught various species of salt-water fishes from the inshore and off shore waters of the Arabian Sea… and since beginning, I have been dreaming of catching a Marlin or Sailfish.

 

And his dream came true when I created a sort of an unregistered record by catching a huge 111.33 lbs Blue Marlin from the Continental Shelf, Arabian Sea on December 3, 2016.

 

It was a real tough fight but Alhamdulillah, I successfully landed this Blue Marlin within 15 minutes of fight. In fact after catching some giant Tunas, while trolling at 10:42 AM, this monster Blue Marlin bit my Zuker blue squirt lure, which was tied to my 80 lbs Daiwa Mono line on the Shimano TLD-50 reel mounted on the Daiwa STP 24Kg trolling rod.

 

The moment was so thrilling that when it got hooked, it immediately jumped off the water and started tail-dancing. Usually, billfish when hooked start jumping and running in order to get unhooked, but luckily with some techniques that I learnt from my Guru, I managed to keep the line tight and made her remain hooked until landed.

Marlin – tale dancing

Marlin – came on surface

It was a 15 minutes tough game and after her 2-3 more jumps I landed my dream catch successfully.

 

For the complete video of this fight, check below:

 

 

Along with this Marlin, our teammate, Muhammad Yousuf bhai landed 2 giant Tunas, weighing 48 Kg and 38 Kg each respectively. I also caught a couple of Tunas, which weighed approx 10 and 15 kg respectively. My son Shahzain caught one Tuna of around 5 Kg. Our captain Mr. Adnan Hussain caught 3 Tunas of around 10-15 kg each.

Exact weight of Blue Marlin – 50.4984 Kg / 111.33 Lbs

 

Our boatmen were Dilboth and Qalandari Mama.
To see more pictures, please click on this link: https://goo.gl/qkyQEE

 

Photos & Video By: Khizar Hameed Kath (Son)

(Abdul Hameed Kath is a proud Pakistani. By profession he is a CFO of a Textile Buying House, (Synergies Worldwide). He is a social worker. Member of Strategic Advisory Board - MPF, Ex-President of Memon Professional Forum, Ex President of The Okhai Memon Youth Services. Member WMO)