Damon:- I had Malcolm, Pat and Jeanna onboard today, and with the weather looking a little ominous, and some wind approaching, we headed south to start the day. The weather was excellent all morning, with light winds and clear skies. The first cast of the day resulted in a 25kg GT for Malcolm, and then the rest of the day continued in the same vein. The morning session was really excellent, fishing the outside edge of the reef on the run in tide resulted in plenty of GTs, red bass and even a bust off to a big coral trout. Jeanna got busted off by a very large GT on a big Nambas orion stickbait, and Pat was using his I-cup hammerhead to great effect until a big trout sampled it in the reef. Most of the GTs for the morning were in the 25kg size range, and we saw a couple of 35kg models, but no monsters today. Jeanna landed one around 30kg in a shallow bay just before lunch, and by the time we sat to rest for lunch we had 13 GTs released for the morning.
A pleasant lunch near a sand cay was followed by the first 2 casts after lunch producing GTs for Mal and Pat, and after this, the wind started to pick up and things slowed down a lot for the afternoon. With the run out tide, and increasing wind, we worked hard for the afternoon, and picked up 2 GTs around 25kg in the shallow blue holes. For some reason, the fish just shut down as soon as the wind started picking up, and they had a serious case of lockjaw all afternoon. However all said and done, we had a really great day, landing 17 Gts for the day and a few red bass and mackerel. Plenty of smiles all round and happy anglers.
Tim: Brendon from Perth was the stand out star today with 7 fish to his name from the total of 8 for the day. Every fish he caught was on a stick bait. The popper was out there for a bit in the morning but unlike the previous days it did not get a sniff. Just goes to show you have to vary your tactics continuously for the prevailing conditions and for the mood of the fish. We roamed far and wide today in search of what proved to be the elusive GT. Overall though we still had enough action to keep the guys casting but the GTs were not committed in their attacks other than the ones we landed. A Red Bass was landed as well which was a pleasant change as we don't usually see lots of them in this area and they pull incredibly hard for their size. Plus the usual light tackle critters that ended up costing Paul dearly in lost tackle to the reef, as the reef ooglies raced away to their caves in the coral.
Nick: We all knew the wind was going to blow today, so I had planned for a more protected day. With Brandon, George and Sam onboard today we managed to land two quick fish this morning and thought it was going to be a good day again. As the morning went on we soon realised that it was going to be hard work for us. The run out tide is what most of us were waiting for which was due to start around 12:30 or so. With that we decided to have an early lunch and wait for it to start flowing. As the water started to look good again, bait was brought to the surface and things looked good, but as we soon found out, it wasn't going to be easy pickings today. The wind had picked up considerably and made things a little tricky. Geroge managed to land a nice GT around 28kilos. As we headed in toward the anchorage we decided to have one last go before sundown. We had been casting at some fusies for some time but couldn't raise any fish eventually I had borrowed Sam's rod and managed to land another GT. On the same bait school we had George filming Brandon while he cast into the bait and before he could take up his slack, bang on again! So I'm glad we decided to go for that one last chance and it was caught on camera. Nice one. Our tally for the day was 6 GTs a nice Red bass around 6 kilos and a few gold spots.
Glanville:- With wind forecasted for the days conditions I tried to take advantage of the mornings conditions and ran up wind to work my way slowly home during the day, with an awesome attack plan we were no doubt going to see fish today but luck wasn't all on our side, within 5 casts for the morning Eric had a decent sized Gt attack his flapper which ended up breaking his reel, that wasn't a worry fot the big man and he just proceeded to hand line the fish in, so 1 rod down we continued our venture, we consistently saw fish all day but were really struggling to get the hooks to stick, it was just before lunch and Eric managed to tame a really good sized fish of around 36kg. We fished in every spot that looked fishy and it wasn't long before I decided the fish were in other places so we gave a blue hole a try and it was on for young and old we had a pack of fish come up and destroy the guys lures and once again we failed to get a solid hook up, Peter then hooked a really good fish and bad luck got us again and the hooks pulled out half way to the boat...we constantly saw fish throughout the afternoon but due to the bad weather I think they had a little lock jaw and they didn't seem to be eating the lures rather just coming up and having a look, a little frustrating when there isn't many fish around. We all still had a great day and I'm sure the guys are going to sleep well tonight after all the casting within the day.
