Loading...

Fishing equipment in Bijagos

Which rod do I need ? Which reel ? What lures are more efficient ? Which braid ? Which hook ?
A real puzzle for fishermen. The head is quickly turning with stores and online shopping sites and the budget flies away.
Inside this page, we advise you that the exotic fishing equipment that you bring to Kere is the most suitable for your desires of fishing in Bijagos.
To each his way of apprehending things. However, it is not always necessary to "over-arm" and buy very high-end products.
Some brands make your eyes shining but the price makes you cry : Smith, Tenryu, Stella, Saltiga. You must know that there are other products much cheaper, very robust and pleasant!
Pleasure must be the rule! Your exotic fishing equipment must be good enough for your expectations.
Here are our tips, it is a non-exhaustive list of efficient, robust equipment, tested in Kere by our fishing guides.

Our first advice: For rods, you can opt for multi-sections travel rods that avoid the roadcase and makes it easier your baggage check-in at the airport.

Rods and Reels

Light spinning

  • rod domina by palms to fish in bijagos on kere
  • rod zenaq bijagos
  • rod shimano to fish in guinea bissau

In Bijagos, for a light pitch, a set for bass is enough. A rod of 2,10m to 2,40m which can propel lures of 15-40g. With the usual, you will use this set in 80% of the cases because it makes it possible to take pleasure by fishing fishes from 1 to 3 kg while hoping to dry an opponent of more than 10kg.
Palm, Tenry offer high-end rods whose price seems exorbitant to us. Shimano, Savagear, ioda or Daiwa offer more affordable rods. For pleasure, Lauge (French custom manufacturer) offers good fishing rods. Finally for small budgets, the rods STC exage of Shimano are indestructible and cost less than 150 €.
For the reels, a size 5000 will perfectly balance the set. If the SW stella by Shimano turns well, its price is high. Shimano also offers cheaper models: Biomaster, Stradic, Saragossa, Spheros. Take also a look at Daiwa or Penn.

Heavy spinning

The big "Bertha" of throwing : it is a set that can send lures of 60 to 120 g. It is a tropical type set : powerful and nervous rod with a good reserve of power. No need for powerful rods like Gabon or Madagascar except for those who want to confront a tarpon. For high-end rods you'll find Zenaq and Tenryu, mid-range Palms, Smith, Shimano and Daiwa. There are now high quality travel rods at very affordable prices.

The reel will be a 6000 or 8000 model depending on the rod. The two high-end reference reels are Shimano's Stella SW and Daiwa's Saltiga. There also, cheaper alternatives exist. For those who want to catch a tarpon at throwing it will take a more robust set with a 10000 reel.

  • heavyrod for fishing in bijagos guinea
  • daiwa rod for fishing in bijagos
  • shimano rod for fishing in bijagos

Trolling, jigging, vertical fishing

  • trolling set
  • casting reel for jigging

For the troll, the whole heavy set is a good option. It needs a stiff and sturdy rod that can withstand the trolling of the big bib lure and the attack.
Ideally, for the jig, it would need a shorter rod but many fishermen use their throwing rod. In Bijagos, we rather use slow jigging on funds of less than 40m, a little long rod is not very annoying. Rare fishermen are using a casting set for the slow jigging.

For the vertical fishing, the spinning or jigging rod is perfect. Lead weight ranges from 60 to 150g depending on the water flow.
For the troll or tarpon fishing, it is possible to use stand up rods from 30 to 50 pounds. We land for free this type of rod and exotic fishing gear in Kere.

Fly fishing

Fly fishing in Bijagos is quickly developing. We recommend using two models: a set of 9 to 10 feet for silk of 8 and one for silk of 10/12. The reel should be robust with good backing ability. For the lightweight set an entry-level reel by JMC or Sage seems enough.

For the silk, you would need ideally a floating silk with plunging head but a classic floating silk is also effective. The set of 8 silk will serve to fish in front of Kere such fishes as elops, trevallies and mackerels of reasonable size. Silk 10 will be necessary to face bigger opponents: big trevallies, barracudas and why not baby tarpon.

  • reel for flyfishing in bijagos
  • reel and rood set for flyfishing in bijagos
  • reel by JMC for flyfishing in bijagos

Lures

Popper

The most effective color for surface lures is unmistakably pearly white. Besides, Laurent Durris, fishing guide in Kere, repaints all his used lures in white ! It's simple and very effective.

You will need two sizes of poppers: poppers of 10 to 12 cm weighing 20 to 40 g (which you will use most often) and some big poppers of 15 to 20 cm per 60 to 100 g to attract big trevallies.

The animation of the poppers is made of drawns more or less ample and more or less fast to make jets of water in the front of the lure. When you follow trevally, you have to continue to animate the lure whereas the red carps appreciate the stop and go..

Our favorite lures for Bijagos are: feedpoppers (a little expensive but very effective in 10-12 and 15 cm. These lures are easy to animate and make a magic walking the dog at low speed), Pulsion TR (very affordable. The brand new 10 cm drive proved to be formidable), dumbbell pop in 10 and 15 cm, roosta pop, orion popper and many others ....

StickBait

Like the poppers, the reference color is pearly white. Stickbait are surface lures but sticks passing under the film of water are sometimes formidable and make the difference when the fish refuses to rise to the surface (troubled waters).

Here again, we advise you to have two sizes : lures 10 to 12 cm that you will use most often and some sticks bigger, 15 cm max.

The animation of the stickbaits is the walking dog, the lure swimming in zigzag. You can also make the lure flap more quickly. Finally the stop and go decides the most refractory red carps. The attack is more often made during the stop.

The stickbaits of reference are: the spook in size 10 and 12 cm (not expensive), the asturie in size 10 and 12 cm (quite expensive but according to my friend JG the asturie it is a "killing" jeu de mots difficile à retranscrire en anglais), Topdog, Mousty, Swimmy (difficult to found but great), Mis Carna, Zclaw (expensive). The lures going under the water film : subwalk in two sizes, lures shadd sebile, debu nyoro (small size) ....

Jerkbait

To fish in Bijagos, you will need two types of jerkbait : jerkbait for spinning and others for the trolling.

For the spinning, the lures are small bib for a maximum swim at 1m50 because you will fish flush with rocks. The size is 10 to 12 cm. The most important colors are white and silver. The animation is linear with stop and go. Red carps love this type of lure. The way most used lure is the white color luckycraft lure B-Freeze 100. Hart offers a cheaper clone and very effective too (ringer jerk). Rapala also offers small swimming fishes to test.

For the trolling, the lures must be large bib for a swim between 4 and 9 meters. The size of the lures is between 14 and 24 cm to attract larger barracudas. The bright colors are very attractive : tigerfish for example. Marlboro color is a safe bet. The very classic Rapala Magnum (aluminium bib) from 18 to 24 cm is a good start. The rapala X-rap or Storm's Deep thunder are great alternatives.

Jig

The choice of jigs is very wide. To guide you the best, you must know that in Bijagos we using slow jigging in depths of maximum 40m. No need for very heavy and long jig. No color has our preference.

The classic "blade" jig are probably the least used jigs because of the lack of depth and the type of animation that is more of a waddle than jigging frenetic and tiring. Weight between 70 and 120g. We prefer slowjig

The second type of jig is made of a leaded head and a skirt or an octopus. they are the madai (rather round leaded head and a skirt) or the inshiku (elongated leaden body associated with an octopus). Weight between 75 and 150g maximum (90 and 120g are our preference).

The flexible lures associated with a lead seal are very interesting lures as equipment for the exotic fishing in Bijagos. The leaded head is classic from 75 to 120g. The choice for flexible lures is very wide. We like Sawamura's One Up Shad (though a bit expensive), Delalande's Shad and Sandra. Warning, to almost every key, you will need to change the lure: it quickly becomes expensive.

In a variant way, the Texan fixture limits the hooks at the bed of water. A flexible lure mounted on a Texan hook of 3/0 to 5/0 between two pearls. This mounting has been put and adapted at the Bijagos way by my friend, Jean Gilles.

Fly fishing

Several types of flies are effective in Kere. The choice is wide and sometimes complicated. You will need flies adapted to your reel rod set. Prefer the flies for silk of 8.

Poppers : conical head, elongated body or gurglers are good lures. The color seems unimportant, the red and white work well. Shrimp imitations like the Crazy Charlie are references. These simple but weighted flies are very popular with predators from Bijagos!

Streamers and imitations of fry are the flies to have in your box in Kere. The choice is wide. Our favorite streamer is the quick silver (size 1/0) of Flashmer. This is a streamer for the bass. We use it for the current fishing on the beach of Kere : elops, Senegalese trevallies, mackerel bonito. Green back streamers are also effective.

Also take some bigger streamers to try the beautiful trevallies, the barracudas and why not a baby tarpon.

Accessories

Lines

  • line peche bijagos
  • braid for fishing guinée bissau

To the spinning, the reels must be equipped with 30 to 40 pounds braids for the light set and 60 to 80 pounds for the heavier throw.

The bottom lines will be mainly nylon of 50 to 80 pounds type shock leader. Fluoro carbon is not an obligation.
You will also need some bottom lines of 60 to 80 pounds steel braid for the troll because barracuda has sharp teeth. You could buy steel bottom lines in our shop at the same price as in France.

Staples

  • quick staple
  • staples and broken ring

For surface lures, it is not mandatory to use staples. If the staples are too heavy they can even unbalance the swimming lures, especially that one of stickbaits. However, it is very convenient to use "quick" staples of 25 to 40 kg of resistance. These staples allow a very simple change of the lure. In addition, these staples never open. We recommend staples EMERILLON X-TREND ROLLING + CLIP T-SHAPE BLACK SERT, or SUNSET.
Some fishermen prefer a welded ring attached to the bottom of the line associated with a broken ring for the lure.

For the troll, we use conventional tough staples of 1/0. For the jig, "quick" staples 1/0 are interesting.

Hooks

  • the best hooks by owner
  • some hooks for fishing in bijagos

We recommend re-arming all lures with strong triple hooks made of iron. You must look for the best compromise between weight and resistance. The OWNER brand imposes its superiority. You need triples of the same size. Owner declines his triples according to their resistance, the ST66 being the most resistant but also the heaviest. We advise for the lighter lures of ST58.

For the jig as for the handline or the surfcasting, you need strong hooks made of iron. Size from 1/0 to 5/0 (3/0 is a good compromise). For texan mounting, very strong texan hooks of iron, size 3/0 to 5/0.

Pliers and scissors

  • Pliers and scissors for fishing in bijagos
  • some Pliers and scissors for fishing in bijagos
  • plier by reins

In the indispensable exotic fishing equipment, any good Bijagos fisherman must have a quality pair of scissors to section the braid and large diameter nylon bottom lines.

Broken rings pliers of medium size, no need to take a "big game" type of pliers.

A pliers strong enough and long enough to unhook easily and safely the fish. Some fishermen use their broken ring pliers to catch the fish but pliers can be quite short. Be careful with your fingers !!

The essential fishing in Bijagos