Small boat GT fishing in Mackay

[Andrew Susani]

Thanks Mark, it is a good boat and while a railing would be beneficial in some ways, it would get in my way 99% of the time 

Sacco, I agree that fishing monster poppers has to be one of the finest forms of fishing.  I think the anticipation of the violent strike is what keeps the body pushing through the obvious fatigue barrier    Doing this in summer up here with no breeze can be absolute torture    I think that secretly, no matter what $$ people pay for a lure, they want to see it ripped in half by one of these fish.  As a friend of mine says "there is no point going to war if you can't come back with war stories"... 

I am keen to improve my hook arrangement too, to minimise collateral damage to the fish.  I have read a lot about the pros and cons of trebles v singles on this forum and will make some adjustments to my lures to see if things improve.

Damian, the hull is great but the ocean here in Mackay can destroy even the best reputations    It can be deadset awful when the big tides push against the wind, even just a slight breeze, which unfortunately is 90% of the time up here    On the full or dark moons at this time of year, some of the tidal movement is in excess of 6.3m    Ironically when it is nice and calm for boating, I don't have much faith that the fish will cooperate 

I guess the limited windows make the captures even more memorable.

[Sacco Gerard]

I am keen to improve my hook arrangement too, to minimise collateral damage to the fish.  I have read a lot about the pros and cons of trebles v singles on this forum and will make some adjustments to my lures to see if things improve.

Andrew,
My Guru Eric l. G. said something like this  , if there are many fish in the area and high activity, single hooks are a good solution, a lost fish, 10 was found  , but otherwise the treble hook (barbless for me) seems better, in belly or tail, each has his  cup of tea at that level,  for me is tail of popper for now.
As we  should never say "I will never drink  the water of the fountain

[Andrew Susani]

Sacco, your English is far better than my French    It must be hard to follow some of the long posts here but there is a lot of gold nugget information to be found from some very experienced anglers 

[Peter Morris]

Andrew,

Dont worry its the same story here further down on the Sunshine Coast.
This summer we have had wind,wind and then more wind.

The windows of opportunity during summer to fish offshore are few and far between.

Pete

[Geoff Volter]

Hi Andrew,

Hadnt seen a report from you on that other forum for a while and was wondering what you'd been upto and how the boat was going. Now I know!

There's some nice G's in those pics- bloody well done.
Whats the red rod?

I really enjoyed your post. Thanks

[Travis Heaps]

Have you come across the "baker rig" for the belly location Andrew?  I personally really like this setup with a large single on the tail.  Trebles can be necessary to stabilise certain stickbaits but i personally dont like using them for the damage they do to the fish.  There's been a lot written about singles vs trebles and it seems your in a position (plenny of fish around  ) to come to your own conclusions pretty readily.

Also agree with you about weather, same down here a bit further south...if its perfect for boating they can be very hard to track down!  But then it gets rough and it's miserable to run any decent distances...always need a bigger boat (or just two boats maybe )

[Peter Childs]

Nice post Andrew.....Kudos to you!

Nothing like finding your own fish on a boat you put together yourself......that's half the fun of it all!

Well done.

[Peter Heinke]

Nice report ....
good to see its able to be done in a small boat close to shore.... and i know what you mean aout the wind!

[Andrew Susani]

Hi Voltzy, yeah this has consumed a fair bit of my time lately... more exciting than the fly    we did see about 20 big blue bastards the other day though so I should get back into it.  The rod is an FCL Labo XStream Cast MH - I wrote a little about it under a Fishhead thread here:

http://www.gtpopping.com/forum/index.php?topic=4828.0

Travis, I was either going to try the baker rig on the front, or an assist hook from the eyelet - a mate has had good success with that but I think it will be lure dependent, with the risk of the hook tangling on the leader.

I guess if there were sheltered places up here then the weather would not be so much of a problem, it's just very open water and that short chop coming from every direction will drive you bananas! 

[Geoff Volter]

Hi Voltzy, yeah this has consumed a fair bit of my time lately... more exciting than the fly    we did see about 20 big blue bastards the other day though so I should get back into it.  The rod is an FCL Labo XStream Cast MH - I wrote a little about it under a Fishhead thread here:

http://www.gtpopping.com/forum/index.php?topic=4828.0

Mate, they both have their places... Plus airlie is just up the road and you can do both there in most conditions.

The aggresion and violence of the strike and the fishing itself with the GT pooping is awesome!

[Charles Cintron]

Great story Andrew! I really like your boat and how you did everything yourself looks very clean and efficient. Ive never seen a boat with a cross bar like that up front would be very good to keep balance in some of the conditions I fish in.

Does the trolling motor ever get in the way when fighting fish, or does fish wrap themselves around it?

[michael north]

Charles, the lean post is brilliant, when Andrew showed me the size of it wondered if it would flex too much, but there is little to no bend in it. My first fish there was no lean post and the chop was ridiculous(we have now started naming spots after washing machines). I remember trying to keep my balance whilst getting dragged around the deck by a stubborn fish with plus 10 kg of drag thinking to myself "what have i gotten myself into". You can use the lean post when the fish is pretty much anywhere around the boat, bar when they get near the motor at the back, then you have to hustle.

The electric motor can be awkward to maneuver a rod around with a fish on the other end, but I believe that the benefits far outweigh the negatives. you can cut the motor well away from the spot you want to fish, cruise silently in and the ipilot will hold you in position within 1 foot (don't quote me on that), when you need to pull a fish away from structure you don't need to start the boat motor, and it will turn on a dime. We haven't lost a fish so far from it (touch wood) and i wouldn't fish without one.

[Andrew Susani]

Yeah, what Mick said     I haven't ever had a problem with the electric getting in the way when a fish is trying to pull me overboard.

Like Mick said, being able to move into shallow areas under stealth of a minn kota is a huge advantage to all forms of fishing.  I wouldn't bother chasing a lot of species up here if I couldn't use it.  Of even better benefit, is the iPilot spot lock feature, which locks the GPS position to within 5ft, and holds us there automatically under quiet electric power, regardless of wind or current   

[Andrew Susani]

I'm not sure whether to start a new thread or just add to this one... I think I will add to this one to keep all the info in one place for anyone else wanting to try and find their own GTs locally.

With a great weather forecast for multiple days, I decided to make a day trip out to a very special spot off Mackay where we had seen lots of bait and activity a few years back.  I was fishing with a mate Tye, who was with me when I landed a very big GT from a local spot of ours.  Since then, he was hooked and was very keen on getting some gear together and having a crack at this popping caper.

Conditions out there were great, just like a great big lake.  Tidal movement was not huge but still 4.5m or so of run.  When we got there, we could see lots of bait in close, and fusiliers out further from the rocks.  It was literally going to be "ripple fishing".  This had to work.

Tye was first to hook up, on a good old 120g dumbbell cast in towards a rocky point.  The fish pulled hard and after 10 mins or so, Tye had his first big GT boatside.  The oppressive Feb heat with no breeze knocked the stuffing out of him, and it was a while before he cast another popper.  I did manage to get the fight on video with my onboard Contour camera, but discovered later that the goddamn footage was blurry.  Turns out it is a fault in the camera, which is going back.  Anyway, here is the footage if anyone is interested:

Tye's first GT

It's a little bit longer than I would normally do, but it was his first    At least the photo turned out well...



While Tye was getting ready to resume the session of pain, I spotted some rippling goodness and repositioned the boat.  First cast in and whammo.  Unfortunately I made the cast a little out of the camera's cone of vision, but we got the fight and the unfortunate ending    Again, I apologise for the blurriness    and that squeaking noise of the rod butt in the gimbal is so annoying!  You'd think Carpenter and Jigging Master would get along better 

GT Popping in Mackay - shark attack

It was awesome to watch the dozen big GTs following this one up.  Not so impressive were the 3 sharks also following    Those sharks killing the GT boatside was very exciting but really put a dampener on the morning.  I am smiling in the pic, but it really depressed me, as you can tell from the video.  Such a shame but I guess it is a fact of life in these offshore spots.  It puts a big emphasis on getting those fish in fast!

[Andrew Susani]

We continued fishing the ripples.  Tuna and mackerel were smacking things out wide of us but our focus was firmly on the G bangers. I tried a big skipping pencil for something different and while I found it mush more tiring to crank than to pop, it raised quite a few keen fish but I pulled hooks on every hookup.  Very unusual.  One fish smashed it right on landing.  We could have tried stickbaits in there but we had another spot to try, and it was as hot as hell    We pulled into a nearby beach for a quick swim to cool off.  The conditions were magnificent.





We went to the second spot after some good advice from a mate who dives the area.  Strangely, we didn't pull any fish off the usual current lines or points with wash bouncing off them.  I made it a point to scour the area and Tye eventually had a big strike from a good fish in a very cosy little corner of a steep rock face.  We have a general rule that the other person helps land the fish, and even though I have had no trouble landing good GTs by myself, it is a pretty handy rule to stick by.

However, this rule got pushed to the limit when I saw 5 other fish under the strike, 3 of them being black... oh, how I had to restrain myself from launching a popper straight in there.  I want a black one so bad!     I resisted temptation and focussed on getting some video on my Canon 7D.  I think the cursed Contour had run out of battery or something    Tye had another tough battle with a rod that we both knew was too stiff for him.  Eventually he wore down the fish slightly more than his vertebrae, and upgraded his GT account with a larger specimen.



He was buggered, but stoked.



This was the start of a very hectic session.  There must have been a convention of GTs sitting in this area, as we got hammered regularly for the next 2 hours.  There was a point there where every cast was hit, it was mayhem.  We didn't land many but had some great entertainment, and didn't bust any off, which was crazy.  I had one fish hit the lure at a great rate of knots and almost pull me overboard.  I am used to them hitting and then mucking around a bit before taking off, but not this one.  He was already at full speed when he hit it and ran about 50m of line out over a shallow reef before somehow I turned him and persuaded him to come to the boat instead 

Funny how the smaller fish can create the most problems!



It was so hot by this point that we were taking turns in using my Carpenter BLC83/40 - Tye fell in love with this thing when he put the first decent bend into it.  It is just so easy to fight fish on.  Thanks again Mr Seyrek



Lucky for me, I nailed the best fish of the day.  It pulled like hell but the outfit controlled it well, and didn't render me too incapacitated afterwards    He had 4 sharks in hot pursuit but my tired arms worked very hard to avoid a repeat shark tax incident.  Tye made a hell of a racket by stomping on the floor of the boat when the fish came close too - not sure what effect that had.



The poor old Dumbbell was starting to look a bit worse for wear, we had 2 of these pretty well trashed in short succession.  I am keen to see how much they can take before breaking    Then I might move onto better quality lures.  They pop very well though, in flat water like this and also in the rough stuff that we are more used to inshore.  Just replace the rings, they are hopeless 



As soon as the tide stopped, it went dead, which may have been a blessing for our arms and back.  It was funny because there was bugger all run where we were - I had the electric on spot lock but it was only using 1.5 throttle (out of 10) to hold us there.  When the tide up here is macking, that electric sits on 10/10 to hold us stationary    All of our action came from a 40m long area which didn't show many obvious signs of fish.  Hardly any bait, nothing got eaten on the surface while we were there apart from our offerings.

We had a look around some other likely looking spots, but no more love was found.  Great day though, even though we smashed 11L of water between us and Tye still managed to suffer some slight sunstroke by the end of it, we will be back very soon to see what other beasties live out here...