Hi all - we're back! Email has been down for the last little while but we're all up and running again and out at Bligh Reef for the next few days. Sounds like this amazing destination is again delivering the goods...
DAMON: A stunning start to fishing at Bligh Reef. First day out and this place is just as good as I remembered last year. We fished the shallows most of the day and caught nearly every species the shallows have to offer, and some I don't even recognise. We caught wrasse, red bass, big trout, GTs, small red things, big brown things, flowery cod and all sorts of other unidentified emperors. Jamie caught a 8kg red bass on light tackle from 2m of water which was a great effort. We saw packs of GTs chasing red bass out of the way to eat lures, and packs of GTs with fish from 8kg-40kg all up in 5m of water chasing poppers. We didn't land any GTs over about 16kg, and I think we landed 6 or 7 GTs all day, but the variety of fish we caught was simply amazing. In fact I just can't believe how many fish are here - we must have caught 50 fish today all up and lost 15 lures on my boat, I am only guessing because I lost count.
I actually can't describe how good the fishing is up here, and this was on a day with 20kn of wind, and we were drifting in flat calm water in the shallows catching so many fish it just seemed wrong.
We ended the day with a quick 40 minute troll on the first of the incoming tide, which I had been waiting all day for, and Jamie caught a 60kg dogtooth before we went home to fresh cooked coral trout for dinner. It feels wrong to actually write a trip report and tell everyone how good this fishing is.....
Alex- Today was great. We had a chilled bunch of guys today and were happy just catching fish. We started the day in the shallows catching all sorts of species and losing quite a few lures. It was awesome seeing a majority of the strikes in the crystal clear water, big red and brown shapes smashing the lures then powering back home. We stopped for a lunch break and the guys were in the mood for a troll around. It was some of the best trolling action i have seen big deep diving minnows were nailing fish every few hundred metres. Pelagics, reefies they were all coming up. We lost count of fish at about 3 this afternoon and the fish count was somewhere around 40fish and the action did not slow all afternoon. It was a great day and i can’t wait to see what the next few bring.
Peter: Today was brilliant we started off drifting in the shallows with
about 3 meters of water. The action and visuals from a vast array of fish in the crystal clear waters were breathtaking. Once the guys in the boat had had enough of losing lures with the light tackle we gave the heavy outfits a go and went looking for GTs. We ended up boating 5 in half an hour all in the size range between 6 to 14kg. The guys were wrapped with that and decided their arms were too sore so we went for a troll. The first spot we pulled up at we had a double hook up in less than 5 mins on Spanish. We caught many different species of pelagic fish including tuna, mackerel, green job fish and GTs to name a few. The boys decided they needed some time to recuperate so we came back to the boat for lunch and then I took them in the shallows for a snorkel - they said the coral was the best they had ever seen. After that we had about an hour of fishing time remaining. When we were trolling before lunch I discovered a bommie that came up to 14m from 40m of water. The sounder showed plenty of life on and around the bommie so I suggested we give plastics a go. Sure enough they were all on first drop. Tommy managed to land a trout on plastic that was up around the 10kg mark.
