I Tested the Fishing on a Forgotten Island.

Samoa. I dreamed about this place for years. Thousands of kilometers from home lies a chain of volcanic islands surrounded by some of the clearest water you'll ever see. Steep jungle covered mountains fall straight into the pacific where giant trevally, tuna and countless other predators patrol. Untouched reefs, lagoons and flats. Over the next two weeks we're going to explore it all. But first I have to get there. There's a few plane flights, a few airports to go through. After a relaxing flight and airport transfers I arrive and step foot onto Samoan ground for the first time. There's a surprise here waiting for me. A surprise that has a strong Samoan heritage and will be a crucial part of our story for this trip. Hey bro, come in here bro. Good to see you man. What's up? Oh you've made it, finally. Fire out man. Johnny and Nico, the guys behind Malossi Lures, close friends of mine whose family originates from these rugged remote islands of Samoa. We're here for a reason. Not only are we chasing huge GT on the top water lures but we're filming a secret project called Origins. This is a film series in collaboration with Daiwa, Malossi featuring Johnny and Nico, Briggsy and myself. You'll learn more as the series progresses but in a nutshell we're here retracing the steps John and Nico took on their first Samoan adventures where they tested the first lures they ever made. We'll be going to all those original ledges they fished and learning all about the origins of Malossi and where it all started here in remote Samoa. To say I'm excited is an understatement. We ride in typical Samoan style as I soak in the view and the scenery from the back of the Ford Ranger. John's giving me a rundown and a full guide-like experience as we cross to the other side of the island heading for our base which is in their family village nestled up in the palm trees. We made it. Welcome. It's a family home. It is. My uncle lives over there in that place. That's our family and meeting house. The cook house over there and this is my grandfather's house where we're going to be staying. Sweet. Shoes off. Awesome man. Feet's a single person tent bro. Yeah so Zion will go in there. Me and Nico will go over here. Fresh fruit. The bananas actually look really good man. I'm going to try one right now. There's lots of different types of bananas. These ones are quite sweet I think. Oh bro probably the best bananas I've ever had. Bro those bananas are so good I'm gonna have another one. Best banana I've ever eaten I reckon. Come on. Yep. We're in the islands. Raining season. Wow. Explaining to Joe what rainy season is. Look at his face. Like I said yesterday it was like passing down. It was so dark. Then it cleared and it was like brutal heat son. Yeah but it's starting to be nice. A bit of tropical action will be nice. Yeah it will be. It would be. Looking at the forecast today provided it comes good. The rain's supposed to clear up and the sun's supposed to come out. We thought we'd do a bit of a combo day. There's a really cool zone here where you can fish the flats and you can also get out to the reef sedge on the low tide. Big tides at the moment so it should drain right out and there's a lot of like areas of dead coral that can just walk along and cast. That's the plan and Joe's first day in Samoa. Hopefully it's a good one. All right first little session guys. We're going to just fish these little points. You can see there's a couple of little rocky points spread around the place. We're just going to fish them on our way to a particular area that Johnny's eyeing up for today. So we've got a goal in mind today. We've got a plan but on the way there we're just going to have quick casts at each one of these little points. Water looks super nice. Early. So I think we're in. I think we're in for some action Yeah boy. Oh it's solid. Did you see it? I don't know. Maybe a bluefin or maybe a bagger. Bro it looks solid Johnny. First fish of the trip. It's a GT. GT eh? Yeah I think so. Okay what are we going to do here? Bring it down this way bro. Easy brother. Don't lose it. Easy. Remember you're light. Yeah I'll get it. If you can guide him. I'll bring it around. All around to the bay. White sand would be amazing bro. Solid bro. What do you want to do? Yeah I'll try to bring him into that. No bro. No no. There he is. Look he's still there. Watch him. Watch what he does. He's going in. Look he's still in there. He's still up against the rocks there. GT going in bro. GT right up in the shallows. Right up in the shallows. Bro he's coming here. He's coming here. He's coming here. Right there. Right there. Grab him. Grab him bro. He's right there. Oh he's out. He's out of there. He's down there. Oh no. Oh no. The shark was trying to eat the lure man. It bit the line. That was pretty crazy eh? Yeah that was crazy bro. That was crazy. No. Alright well steamy on the board. Steamy. Oh that was hectic man. And there's nothing we could do about it. It would suck. Shark just came straight in on that fish. Oh man how gutting was that Johnny? Yeah. So what happened to shark? The shark was trying to eat the lure out of the GT and he just obviously bit through the line man. Maybe next time we'll bring around here and someone jumps down because there's not the steps aren't that big. Who would have guessed that shark would have turned up and done that though eh? Nah nah. We never see sharks here. I would almost say there's no sharks here. Not long after that we decide to move further and explore more of the spot. It's raining heavily now with warm tropical raindrops. The rocks turn out to be super slippery too. Oh I fully smoked myself. Not good. I find this out the hard way but this isn't the worst for the day in which you'll see shortly. The fall was kind of worth it though as it made me stop and cast from this point where I get a bite from a classic tropical predator nearly instantly. Yep. On. Something I don't know what. Barracuda. Just as I'm trying to figure out how to handle this fish safely the hooks come loose. Now to be honest I wasn't too upset as these barracuda have insanely sharp teeth that I definitely don't want to tangle with. So yeah as the tide drops lower we decide to push through and get out towards that infamous drop off that is our goal for the day. With the slippery rocks making it slow going Johnny asks if I want to try a pair of the cleats he has in his bag and he shows me how effective they are on these Samoan rocks. These spiked cleats are going to be a game changer and I quickly find that I'm able to do the impossible on these ice like rock. We shouldn't be slipping anymore, well at least that's what we think for now. Remember I am with Johnny Molossi. Right how nice is this? This is nice man. Look at it. Man this spot looks so good. There's a mixture of deep channels and shallow reefs bordered by lagoons and amongst the water in front of me there are coral bommies that lie just below the sea surface. With the cloud covering in thick it made it really difficult to see these bommies but eventually I found one. We can't lose too many precious lures. Johnny's going out to get it off the reef out here. Must have just caught some coral or something. Is there a bit of current there bro? Big John's getting it. Sweet cheers bro. The subsurface lures we're using are not a good mix with shallow coral reef. I laugh to Johnny hinting that I need him to swim out again but Nikko came to my rescue. It's like casting into a minefield you can't see the danger but there's also a big chance of getting a big fish bite at the same time so it's kind of worth the risk. Although we did bring a lot of lures over here we don't have a lot of these heroes which is this little bibb minnow that we're using. A molossi creation of course. Now one thing about Samoa is that I definitely would not be doing what I'm doing right now if this was Australia. There's far too many sharks, crocodiles and jellyfish to risk a lure retrieve like this over in Australia that's for sure. I think if we get this back I'm going to change lures. Maybe a little chieftain or something might be to go here. Yeah boy. Cheers bro. Nikko and I cast side by side for a while but don't have much luck apart from a few swirls in behind the lures but across the lagoon it looks like John John is having a good time going by all the yelling he's doing in typical Johnny style. Yep yep got a bit of juice. Little bluefin trevally. I don't know what big one's gonna feel like that was crazy it's tiny. We'll let him go. Easy easy son. After that little bluefin Johnny casted again near us and had another bite. This time a barracuda. Now remember earlier I mentioned how gnarly the teeth of a barracuda were? Well check these out. You can see why we don't want to get bitten by one that's for sure. Oh there he goes. He's just chilling. As the tide gets lower and lower it opens up more spots that we can fish. The main drop off is nearly ready for us now but we've got a little bit more walking to do. I turned my camera off unfortunately it was bad timing as seconds later this happened. Johnny you all good bro? Are you all good man? That was a bad one. Bro you f****** reels man. I thought you were I was like you're good then I saw your head was stuck under I was like I need to go help him. Oh you're rolling. I didn't get the start but can we just be clear that two of these reels are mine? Yeah man I'm sorry bro. Oh look at that look at that. It broke off on my finger. Holy s***. Is that in your skin or is it just in the glove? In the skin. Oh no not in my skin. Glove glove. Oh my god. Oh well here's your highlight reel. No I didn't get the fall man I just got the end. Oh you didn't? I just when you're in I turned it on. Are you going for it? It's a bit of a long one hey? I'd be fine if I knew my bag didn't have a slight little leak in it. Keep going keep going keep going another meter keep coming. Bro you're doing 360s bro. Okay the plan is we're heading out here we're going to go and stand on the reef drop off. You can see there's all this flat that runs out past Nikko and it just drops off into super deep water so we're going to go find a spot to stand casting into that real deep water with the heavy setup. So this was the main chance of getting a real big fish this reef drop off was a short wade from where Nikko had caught that last fish and the rocks our bags were sitting on were not that far from us either. The reef edge drops abruptly down in front of us it's incredibly deep and who knows what's lurking below. It's actually kind of scary when you're waist deep but whatever's down there let's hope they're hungry for the lures. A little bit deep there hey? We casted our lures for about an hour with only getting a few swirls and Nikko losing that lure to the wind knot. You snap off? No. The waves felt like they were getting bigger and bigger as the day went on and with the very slow action we decided to head back to the ultra calm lagoon closer to the coconut trees where we ended up catching a couple of these ferocious little rooster fish. Well that's what we call them anyway. They're actually incredibly aggressive and actually quite good fun on the light sets. We were all really tired and had a big day planned for tomorrow in a spot where we knew we would definitely connect with some big fish so we decided to make the trek back through the jungle and call it a day. Good morning we've got the heavy set we're going to be looking for big fish very tropical very remote very very cool spot so yeah if you're watching this if this made it to youtube you can expect to see some action. The sun's not long peaked over it's light enough for us to see so we're pretty excited hopefully today we get some monsters. We're going to fish this ledge here first. Bit of swell but we're just going to watch it and see what happens. Some nice coastline here man look how nice this coastline is. Good time for a gt attack too on the lures with that sun just peaking over. Yeah i reckon let's get into it. Johnny's got the drone up in the air we're going to film the and the lure i'm going to run first is that one there it's a molossi chieftain 95 gram so 190 mil. All right and this is where we're fishing could be a gt sitting right here first cast so let's hope. All right here we go oh yep what's that shark is it or gt oh come on yep it's a gt he's gone down underneath us had the bailer open and then i closed it just to see if he was out because the line angle looked like it was out as soon as the weight came on ping it was a gt as well there was a pack of them. Oh well but then we know the charts. The positive is they're eating now yeah yeah if i could get right to the water's edge i would have been sweet but it's just too dangerous to go down there. I like you bro. Yeah man all right guys i'm just going to quickly retie so i won't bore you with it but here we go boom all right tie it on i'm going for a popper that's one of the 135 gram tyrants super nice looking man that's what i'm going to throw now yeah boys dude that water looks so nice man yeah oh gt or long tom oh tuna you see him jumping oh oh yeah look at that look at this out here guys yellowfin tuna probably bro that's cool man tell them to come in here the dream would be to hook up right in this little cove right here man and try and keep it in there gt nicole's seen one this is quite a lot different to australia right just how like we're fishing expecting cruisers yeah it's more like what you're doing in new zealand bro yeah it is it's very similar man i quite like it to be honest man it is so hot out there right now it's ridiculously hot i'm just sitting under the shade the old palm trees up behind me we should have bought a machete i would have been keen as to cut open one of these coconuts we left it in the truck unfortunately i want to go and like lie in a rock pool but thing is the water is warmer than the air so it's not even that refreshing the boys are still casting though but i'm just going to have a drink and chill out for a bit in the shade regain some energy with not much action for the morning apart from that one lost fish just after dawn we're all feeling like something was surely about to happen i'm also still gutted i got reefed to be honest that fish earlier should have been mine man but this is how it goes sometimes it was my first big fish hook up here in samoa and that overhang just still haunts me man but this was not going to be my last big fish hook up on this trip as it turns out and you'll see more about this as this series progresses i changed lures i decided to put on a big chieftain from the molossi staples range this particular color actually caught me a real big gt last year on an island trip that me and johnny did so i've got a good feeling about it here today so we've only got a short amount of time left here to fish at this ledge because this afternoon we've got a big surprise to show you that we cannot be late for what the heck that was crazy what is it i don't know what it is oh it's gt gt yeah maybe we honestly might just be able to winch it straight up okay i'm just worried about getting around here even drop him in here for a breathe drop him in here for a breathe he had it for quite a while before i struck at him yeah boy what happened there bro that was such the crazy hit man he was swimming at me i didn't even think he had the lure thinking that he'd let it go down deep but no he had it he was just coming straight at me by the time i realized i had to crank up the slack and then strike on the big chieftain as well man yeah emerald color right yeah boy chieftain 210 right should we just go over here and just launch him you got cleats on johnny let's go quick quick quick quick quick on this wave ready very stoked with that man i guess i'm gonna get casting again just look how nice this water looks look how blue that water is is that insane that is awesome all right let's go again oh look like a job fish after this job fish bite things went quiet again and after a barrage of casts we're sent out into this electric blue water actually i cannot believe how blue this water is look how freaking blue this water is it's insane it's probably the bluest water i've ever fished by now it's getting really hot we're powering through the water and i needed a drink so i headed back to the bags where i found nico applying more zinc he also didn't know it yet but he was about to catch a very very cool fish yeah nicole he's on coming bro big bluefin where do you want me to go where's the waves coming oh dude that's a tank man that's a solid blue here on the crusader crazy johnny just getting a little underwater shot of the lure in its mouth look at the colors on it dude it's insane hey solid bluefin bro on the crusader dude that's crazy man that's the biggest one i've seen look at the colors on that man i'd love to catch one like this such a cool looking fish hey bro after that huge bluefin i noticed a tropical storm was approaching rapidly and it wasn't long until a harsh line that was the storm front was passing directly over top of us lightning cracked downward into the ocean a few kilometers in front of me so i turn around to ask the boys if they saw it too this is when i got a tingly feeling on the back of my neck where did it even come from probably where the light cloud goes to dark right on that edge right there somewhere pretty trippy oh holy that was really close man was anyone rolling for that i was rolling for that holy dude i don't want to be i felt that one man i don't want to be near the trees bro i don't want to be in the open i don't know the trees will probably go jesus christ bro that was insane that was right above us man what do we do i reckon we just get our boost it it's far away away from the storm that way yeah it's right above us man that crack was right above us bro is there a jungle path oh you want to go to the jungle part how the f you gonna find that bro i'm gonna run and get my bag oh that was actually gnarly that is scary hey yeah i wish i was rolling because it was like just this massive fork you were standing there five minutes ago yeah we're gonna bail we're gonna stick to the jungle i think everyone got everything tropical thunderstorms eh of all the things that can happen you know with what we do getting hit by lightning is not one you can think of either what do you do if someone gets hit by lightning well if they're not dead you have to hit the e-perm or something but i don't know man yeah what do you actually do if someone gets hit by lightning let me know in the comments but if it's not obvious we're high tailing it out of here through the jungle avoiding the open ground where we can we make it back to the ranger and it is now time for the surprise and we've only got a few minutes to get there on time so let's go how do you guys feel well cooked that was a fast that was a fast hike back through the yeah yeah so a pretty good day right now we're gonna end this episode with a little surprise we've got one more thing to do we're gonna do it right now so you won't have to wait long we've got something crazy about to go down waiting waiting johnny he's got pants on brigsy's joining us from now on last piece of the puzzle that's the team we're out of here you excited we've had some pretty gnarly storms but they don't last long they just come through and stop oh look at my first coconut all right so this is the team i'll probably finish this episode here next time you see us we'll be on a very very cool adventure the whole team on the next episode see you then