Just got back to NZ after Nomad trip to Bligh reef over the last week of September . Flew to Cairns then onto Lockhart River ( 1 and a half hours north) and then by road (1/2 an hour or a bit longer if you're not the local driver !) by Road to Portland Roads.
Then onto Mother ship which was anchored off shore and after lunch into the 6 metre boats for a fish on the way out to the reef . Didn't get past the first point before we had a session on the longtails and then onto the reef itself for the usual pop till you drop. took the mother ship about 3 hours to get to the anchorage whilst we popper fished away the afternoon.
Unfortunately I don't have the technology nor expertise to upload photos from the Nomad disc for the week , so will have to give a generalised description . My abiding memory of the week was the variety of species we caught. In no particular order and my own catchs only the following species were accounted for - Longtail , Tuna, GT, Blue fin Trevally , Tea Leaf Trevally , Big Eye Trevally, Coral trout (all colours and sizes ), red bass , Various Cods , Jobfish (2 colours) , Spanish mackerel, Shark Mackerel, Scad , rainbow runner , maori Wrasse , various Emperors. also had a number of Dogtooth encounters (a couple were landed by other anglers) and a brief black marlin hook up whilst we were having a lazy troll between reef entrances.
As far as popping goes we caught plenty of Gt's up to probably 30 Kg's and dropped a few larger ones mainly in the shallows .Alos caught a lot of Blue Fin trevally up to about 8 Kg. Most of the fish were caught on 100 to 125 gm Poppers and Stick Baits. Some of the Coral trout were huge and Red bass were prolific - we had a number of floating bommies of these. One highlight for me was catching a 25 kg plus Maori wrasse on a popper - had never caught one before and caught 3 in total.
Weather conditions were generally favourable -about 15 to 20 Knots and made a couple of the reef passes accessible for jigging where we found a number of dogtooth, most of which took my jigs for souvenirs !
We really only covered a small part of the reef and I'm looking at how to get there again next year. Usual top class service from Nomad and the South african connection ! some unusual culinary experiences - Kangaroo and Crocodile !
