Glanville:- back in the game, we left Lizard Island this morning all eager to get out to the reef, the weather being kind to us for a change in this area and with a nice 15knt breeze to start the day you can't go wrong. We put some lures in the water and straight away hooked into a Spanish which was taken to be stitched up for a Marlin bait, we trolled around the edges of the shoal with some more success and a few more mackerel and jobbies were taken prisoner, the guys were keen to get stuck into a few GTs and I managed to find a shoal that had some fusies on it and we all know what that means... we immediately saw a few fish but they didn't seem to want to get out and eat the lures properly. We went around the corner and another shoal of fusies ensured us that there would be a few more GTs lurking, the guys sent their lures flying and it was on! 4 lures in and 4 fish hooked up almost simultaneously with others left without any of the pie, between all the carnage and excitement the guys put 2 nice GTs into the boat, we then continued onto the main edge of the reef for a chilled out lunch session, the guys tried for a little while longer for the GTs and then we decided to put some marlin baits in for the last couple hours with no reward, but stand by tomorrow may just be the day
Peter: Today we departed Lizard Island early and headed off straight for the ribbon reefs. We got stuck into the fish early trolling the light gear.
Sharkey mackerel, Spanish mackerel and a nice size GT were some of the fish caught during this period. With the boys pumped to catch a marlin on the heavy tackle we deployed the big baits at around 12 o'clock. We got snipped of by a Wahoo early in the piece and by a couple of barracuda. It was at around 3 o'clock when a big girl of around the 600 pound mark decided to smash the skip bait. It put up an awesome fight and went ballistic on the leader which was pretty cool for the guys to see. With the water starting to look really good I'm sure we will be seeing a few more this week can't wait yeeehaaa!!!
J-Flare: Leaving Lizard this morning we headed straight to some isolated bombies on shoals to the south east of the island to cast poppers, straight away we were tight to a nice fish and had follows on nearly every stop for about half an hour but they where not in a feeding mood just sniffing around. After the run out to the reef we picked up another 3 on the first shoal we stopped at just before the tide turned and we had a little troll with some minnows with no result. Once the tide started pumping in we cast some of the outside edge corners of the reef but never saw a fish which was quite bizarre but we found out why later, next plan was to drift the shallows and hopefully pick off a few trout for dinner but what happened in the next few hours in mostly less than 3 meters of water was quite spectacular, as a steady run of bass and long nose emperor came to the boat we stumbled on a shallow patch of water that was holding the motherload of GT and bluefin, numerous triple hookups resulted in GT and bluefin with some big GT trying to eat little stickshads out of the mouths of any fish that was hooked, the biggest we saw was between 35 and 40kg and the biggest landed was around the 20kg mark which on 40lb braid in 2 meters of water was unbelievable!!! When the session finally came to an end we had boated 5 GT over 10kg and 6 bluefin around the 3 to 6 kg mark throw in another 20 reef fish for the afternoon and one might say we had a cracking session, because we did!
