Glanville:- Greeting my guests at breaky this morning with the short quote, ”swallow now, chew later there are doggies to be caught!!!”, we rushed out to the spot with rods armed with the biggest lures I could find all ready to go... it was soon apparent that the doggies weren’t going to show, so I decided to troll my way up north and in the 2 hours of trolling we managed to snag a couple of mackerel and a 9kg Jobfish until stumbling across a very sexy bit of bottom in the mouth of a channel, we got the jig rods ready and went for it the first 2 fish were instantly eaten by sharks so I moved a little into deeper water in a hope to try get a fish between the sharks. We were lucky enough to get hooked into some mammoth bottom creature that just smoked us in the reef and after the day’s events I’m pretty confident to say that they were giant maori wrasse. When the tide changed we moved onto the flats for a lunch break and the true beauty of the coral reef was standing out like a painting on a white wall, the blue colours that show up between the reef is quite outstanding. After some casting in the shallows it was clear that the fish were off the chew and we never even spotted a single fish, so we went in hunt of some soft plastic grounds, it wasn’t long before all 3 rods were bent, with a selection of red bass, 10kg coral trout and a 6kg purple cod...not a bad start, we continued to fish the drift and for the rest of the day caught quality size fish all around the 5kg mark and bigger with the variety of maori wrasse, purple cod, floury cod, coral trout, red bass, GTs, a few different species of emperors, china man and even a few mackerel were thrown in the mix, the fish of the day had to have been a maori wrasse of around 30kg. We caught 2 solid specimens and were completely and embarrassingly smoked by 5 other bigger ones in the reef and the funny thing about it is that we were jigging with 100lb gear with locked up drags so the ones that got away were half acceptable fish indeed, yet another amazing day out on the water and along with the great weather, great company and a selection of fish thrown in how can you not have a good day.
Nick:- Today started off on a high as all of us raced off to where the doggies had made an appearance yesterday morning. Waiting in anticipation for reels to start screaming....we were left standing. Unfortunately there was no action there this morning. We decided to head out into the deep looking for a billfish and set some big skirts out and trolled for around 3 or 4 hours again with no luck, not off to a good start so far. As the day progressed our luck didn’t change with bits and pieces being caught here and there such as trout, spanish and cod. The guys were still happy to be out on the water and a pleasant day it was anyway despite the poor fishing result.
Peter: This morning started off chasing the doggies that were apparent the previous morning as most boats were heading to the next reef south of the anchorage I took the gamble of heading to the next channel north. I found a pinnacle that came up to 14m from 35m. We must have hooked up over 10 times to good fish but lost them to the sharks the only fish we managed to get out from the sharks was a 10kg job fish. The rest of the day was spent in the shallows and trolling for Spanish. The shallows were slow and steady for most of the day today. Steady all day but the guys were still happy with the results.
Chris:- The plan for the morning was to get on the outside of the reef and get into the jigging and trolling for the elusive doggie but no snaps which was really weird. Lots of bait on the edges and everything looked good. We pulled up a couple of really nice trout. We then moved our way further north trolling a few skirted lures to try our luck at a sailfish. We pulled in a few ripper Spanish mackerel. For the outgoing tide I moved into the shallows and had a ball catching red bass, blue fin trevally and trout. For the afternoon session the guys were really keen on getting into the sailies so we put out a full spread of skirted lures and soft plastic gars but still not a sign of a sail. Plenty of sky rocketing mackerel that kept us entertained for the rest of the afternoon to finish off the season at Bligh...
