Catch and Release: The Best Surf and Fishing Combo Locations On Blue Earth
Surfing and fishing have long been intertwined.
It makes sense. Both involve a shared love and life lived off the ocean. Sometimes it’s a necessity, often a hobby, usually a deep passion, but at most surfing locations, you can usually wet a line and catch a fish. But these locations below have the very best of both. For some, it’s the holy grail: world-class waves and game fishing that create memories for life. Ready to get hooked?
North Western Australia
Quobba Station, home to legendary left-handers Red Bluff and Gnaraloo, is also known as having some of the best land-based game fishing in Australia, if not the world. The ocean off the Western Australia desert is teeming with game fish like Spanish mackerel, broadbar mackerel, cobia, tuna, benito, sharks, and sailfish. More unusual is that you can catch them off the rocks, using ballooning, spinning, bottom bouncing, saltwater fly, and spear fishing. There’s also fish like norwest snapper, pink snapper, bald chin groper, mulloway, queenfish and trevally that dwell on the same reefs that provide 10-second tubes at Red Bluff, or 300-yard gurgling slabs at Gnaraloo. If there is a better surf fish taco, we have yet to find it.
Fiji
Come for the perfection of Restaurants, but stay for the wahoo, mahi mahi, and yellowfin tuna. Or, alternatively, crave the power of Cloudbreak, but come back for the topwater fishing dawn and dusk.
“The best thing about the fishing here in Fiji is just how close to the islands it is,” said Ben Wilson, a fishing, surf, and kite instructor based at Namotu Resort. “You can head out for a few hours fishing, then come back for lunch or when the wind or surf picks up. It means you can fit a whole lot more into each day without feeling trapped on the boat.”
That makes for the ideal dropdown menu of surfing and fishing, where you can mix and match depending on your levels of addiction. There’s never a guarantee for great waves and big fish, but with a day on the Cobalt, the 32’ center console catamaran powered by twin 300hp Yamaha Four Strokes, there are few places on earth where the odds are more stacked in your favour.
Cabo San Lucas
Surfers don’t like to stray too far from the best waves, and Cabo has some of the closest serious blue water fishing on the planet. Not for nothing, it is known as the “Marlin Capital of the World,” and the prime offshore banks such as Golden Gate and Gordo are within a 10-mile run from shore. The fishing is year-round, though the open-ocean pelagics like sails, roosterfish, wahoo, and dorado tend to bite more usually May through August, when the south swells can light up the well-known surf spots like Zippers and Monuments. Later in the year, the north swells hit the East Cape spots, and the marlin season peaks in October or November.
Nicaragua
We don’t need to sell the surf wares of Nicaragua. The 300-plus days of offshores, the tropical temperatures, cheap beer, and mix of slabbing reefs, slopey points, and fun beachies have already sold themselves. What is less known to the surfer who loves to bait is the huge amount of roosterfish, mackerel, mahi, and sailfish that live on the Pacific coast in the Central American sea. Around the premier wave-rich zone of Popoyo for example, you can bookend surf sessions with half-day excursions targeting the powerful roosterfish near shore, chase schools of mahi-mahi, battle trophy sailfish offshore, or do a solo sunset fishing trip along the coast. Or as the Inertia once said, “In Nicaragua, you can get shacked off your head, then reel in a fish bigger than your family dog.”
Samoa
Fishing is a way of life for many communities in Samoa, and most boat rides out to surf the waves on the outer reefs, you’ll see the chain of paopao (outrigger canoes) of the local fishermen lining the inshore lagoons. For generations, the year-round warm waters of the South Pacific and the game fish it attracts, have sustained the Samoan way of life.
And while traditional fishing methods like net throwing, casting, and spearfishing are still used, it is the trolling, jigging, and popping used on charters that will yield the best catches of yellowfin tuna, mahimahi, wahoo, blue marlin, sailfish, giant trevally, and spanish mackerel.
At the Salani surf camp, when you are done surfing the quality Left and Right, both a 5-minute boat ride straight out from the accommodation, or the surrounding breaks, you can organise a charter through several reputable fishing charters in the capital Apia. Luckily, the yellowfin tuna, blue marlin and GT’s tend to run from November to May, which coincides with the best surf season.