For a good fishing trip you need -
1. Time off work - tick
2. Wife's permission - tick
3. Good weather - tick. The BOM predicted 10-15kts NE-NW for 3 days, and fingers crossed it should be spectacular fishing weather.
4. Good tides - tick. 3 days leading up to the full moon.
So pack up the boat, fishing gear, camping gear and head off. I ran into Gav Platz (TienFly) up there , who runs a fly guiding business, who tells me there are al ot of pelagics up at rooneys (mack tuna, spotty mackeral, and longtails) and he's even seen a 20-40kg black cruising the shallows. Great! I thought, I've got a plan B if the spit is unfishable.
In the water at 0400, and its a beautiful day with flat seas. The sun coming up greeted me as I stop over at rooneys and then push onto the Spit. I make good time, averaging 22kts and reach the spit at 0800. As usual there are large 1.5-2m pressure waves pumping up over the spit, which I meander over. Onto the GT reef, and all I can say is MAGIC! The water is crystal clear, with flat seas, so flat that the water appears oily as it pours over the spit in tight pressure waves. This is going to be an AWESOME day!
I stop off the reef to rig up, and look down to find fish congregating around the boat, about 10-15 8kg cobia hanging out the back, schools of small fish in the immediate area swimming around the boat. I setup my three outfits I'm going to use with an Orion BigFoot, a nomad stickbait, and a popper setup with a a bills bug. I normally rotate though so there's some variety and I dont kill myself with exhaustion.
After about 30mins, I get first crashing strike onto the Orion. It a single and makes a good account of itself for 15-17kg fish. A quick pic and back into the water. Second strike is on the bills bug, but its a short strike, about 10 25-30kg fish slam and boil around it in the distance and follow it towards the boat then dive off into the depths. So the very next cast, I grab the orion and cast in the opposite direction. It immediately gets slammed, and it feels like a bigger fish. Up comes a 25kg typical fraser GT, and a quick pic before release. Through the day, the orion seems to be the gun lure, with the poppers (which also rotated through - Jai, R2S, cubera to name a few) raising a fewfish, but they seemed to draw timid strikes.
With my arms aching and cramping, I took a break with soft plastics. But it didn't turn out that way. Immediately slammed by a thicklip trevally. It pulled very hard for a fish its size. There where 100's of them around. And after several smashed up plastics, time for a break from these guys as well. I need some fitness training!
So time for a troll and a lunch break, went for a short troll and an explore but didn't turn a ratchet. Back onto the GT reef, with several more decent fish on board, including what I think is a turrum (I'm not sure, but it was about a metre long, softer less prominent head, with distinctive black speckling.) The cramps hit again, as every time I'd lift a fish for a photo, my arms would cramp up!
All up about 40 GTs seen (several schools of 7-10 fish), 15 strikes, 6 GTs 15-30+kg, ?turrum and several smaller reef fish.
Back to rooneys, dinner and a well deserved beer!
Day 2, white caps on the bay, so the Spit was a miss. I got out the skirts and trolled Fergesons and rooneys for billies. There was bait everywhere and mack tuna and spotties crashing left and right. After about 1,203,421 10-12kg mack tuna, I'd had enough. Changed to a mackeral spread with an Uzi and 2 rapalas out the back. Several spotties later, I had worked my way down to wathumba. The rapala went off, and it had some weight, without the little head shakes of mackeral. After about 15mins, it finally surfaced with a bang. An 80-100 kilo (thats right 8-0 kilo, approx 2.2-2.4m bill to fork length) black marlin crashing and head trashing behind the boat. I could feel the braid whipping in my hands, and prayed the lure would stick. It did, then it took off. AMAZING - in 12m of water. Luckily, the take was not on the two 8kg outfits, but on a GUSA dragon and Tiagra 16 with 130lb braid. After about an hour I had my first glimpse of the leader, but it was way too green. Off it went again. After 2 hours, it was still going strong, and my back was about break in half. It was me or the fish, so I pushed the drag up past strike, as far as I dare given that on the end was not a large stainless singles but VMC trebles. It was now in 6m of water, and I could see circling on its side it on the sandy bottom. After 3 hours and 5 nm I was losing light fast and was running out of options, so I tried to drive it up onto the beach which was only 400m away. I had it into 3m of water, when pop, one hook out, quickly followed by another pop, followed by the final pop. All I could do was one big sigh....
