Damon:- We departed the mothership after lunch with a new group of guys for the start of a new week's fishing. The GT crazy brigade has boarded the boat!! I had Richard Foong, Sean Farmer and Rod Kimberley onboard for the afternoon. The fishing was slow until the tide turned and started running in at 3pm, but after this things went crazy. Rod had the biggest Spanish mackerel I have ever seen try and eat his popper at the boat, this thing was easily 7ft long, and even though I saw it swim under the boat I can't actually believe how big it was, I can't even guess how many kg this fish was because it was so much bigger than any other mackerel I have ever seen... We then came across a patch of shoals with beautiful current trickling overe them, and it was action time. Every time a lure hit the water it was on. Richard had a MASSIVE GT try and eat his stickbait but failed to hookup. Sean landed a nice 10kg Spanish mackerel for dinner, and we landed 5 GTs in about an hour with most of them between 22-26kg. Sean then knocked over a 3kg coral trout near the mothership on the way home and said he'd caught all his target species in the first afternoon. A great day with calm weather and hungry fish, great to be on the water!!
Nick:- On a mission early this morning to get the guys that were leaving today stuck into some fish. Doug had mentioned that he wasn't to keen on battling it out with another GT but he still kept casting hoping that he wouldn't hook up. I think that this definitely sent signals as he managed to hook up first this morning and boated his second GT, he was pretty stoked that it wasn't too big. So he kept casting reluctantly hoping again for no reply but alas, the monster returned a big black GT came up and attacked his Hellhound stickbait, even though I had run up behind him and cranked up his drag the fish felt no mercy and just sped up and managed to reef us much to his delight. Doug then retired. This brought us to around time to return to catch their flight. Picked up the new crew and headed off after lunch we got stuck into some nice golden trevally and Bludger. Waiting for the tide to turn we headed out to some shoals, one cast saw a GT come up to eat the lure but only to get beaten buy a reef shark. We then managed to get our GT at closing time and decided it was time for some coldies.
Glanville:-I started my day's fishing off today with a bunch of fresh anglers to torture, after lunch I had Mark Berg, his film crew, a guest angler Ryan and Kyle out for the afternoon of warm up fishing, it seemed to be a little slow to start with and we saw only a couple of fish, the tide was completely slack so I thought a shot in the dark was our best option, I stopped the boat right in the middle of a shoal in only 6m of water and got the guys casting in all directions and it wasn't long before an angry pack of Gts was all over Ryan's popper, he managed to boat his first Gt ever, a solid 30kg specimen, that seemed to start the ball rolling and the run in tide once again treated us very well, we had fish coming up on every spot we stopped at and after all the guys had boated their first Gt for the trip we decided to change our approach and got stuck into a shoal of Tuna and Rainbow runners, let me tell you that kept the excitement levels peaking in the red with nonstop bending rods as the crazy shoal of fish were frothing all round the boat, every cast and 2 cranks of the handle and line was singing off the reels. It then came that time of the day and we started to head home only to stumble in to a shoal of bait on the edge of a shoal...1 more cast here and sure enough there he was yet another gt bites the dust and we ended the day of with 4 solid Gts and a swarm of other fish on the lighter gear.
Chris:- today was changeover day. So there was a little bit of running around to do to get the guys from this trip a bit of morning fishing. I worked a few shoals close by to the mothership and did quite well. Saw a couple of GTs but never got the hooks stuck in them. Landed a monster barracuda, was probably the biggest I've seen and put up quite a good fight. Caught a fair few bludger and goldspot trevally, shark mackerel and the odd long tom. As it was now time to head back to the mothership a pick the new clients up that were eagerly awaiting a monster GT. I took the new clients to the other side of the reef and tried our luck on a few shoals and edges.
We did quite well we had a double hook up at one stage landing a nice 25kg GT and a 10kg red bass which was quite exciting. I worked my way down the edge and we pulled an absolute horse out around the 38 to 40kg mark which put the new proto type ripple fisher to the test. We saw at least 7 fish 2 of which had to be around the 35kg mark they were ridiculous in size. These fish today were not really on the chew but u would find the odd fish that absolutely nailed the popper/ stick bait. As we now moved into the afternoon I began to work my way around the reef. Pulled out another nice GT of around 12kg however we hooked this fish on 30lbs tackle and gave us a very good fight in the shallows. Saw a few others but still couldn't set the hooks. I moved out to the shoals where we pulled another into the boat of around the 15kg mark. There is plenty of bait which I think in a few more day might get the GTs in numbers. I'm just waiting for the day where they are that hungry it was like they hadn't eaten for a year. And I hope that time comes soon because we are coming with the numbers when that happens. Hopefully another eventful day tomorrow.
