I just had a great little session on GTs with a slight twist.
I was Deckie for a mate who treated his two staff members to a day on the reef. They don't fish so we opted for the old faithful bottom bashing methods to get them into a few reef dwellers. At this time of year and this moon phase day time bottom fishing can be very fickle and as expected the fishing was a little slow for our standards but the new guys loved it. We managed to get 4 Coral trout and a couple of sweet lip past the numerous sharks giving us grief but even that entertained the guys.
We did get stuck into the Tuna throughout the day stopping to let the guys have some fun on light tackle.
At a shallow area we found some bait schooled up against a Bommie so I tossed a Tuna slug at them and after a series of follows managed to hook and land a Spanish Mackerel. While the guys kept trying to catch the others I found a box of large poppers and in amongst the rubbish saw a Halco Rooster with red head and white body. The twist was we left our GT rods at home thinking we would not be doing this so I had to settle with a bottom bashing jig rod!
I couldn't reach the bait school but even still on the first cast a barn door left a hole in the ocean behind it. Next cast was a great hook up but on a small fish. Once landed I have the rod over to Ron who had the bigger fish smash the popper on his first cast. It felt the hooks so did not come back. I ended up hooking a big GT not long after on the Tuna slug of all things so it gave me some grief on the light stuff. I did have a Stela 5K with 30lb braid on a custom built Samurai so was not completely under gunned. Just when I started getting on top of the fish I could feel the first shark hit. By the time it was in sight some 7 or 8 Bronzies were taking turns until I hooked one at the surface as he took the last of the fish. A real shame but an Adrenalin rush for the new blokes.
We ducked off about 200 meters after this and once again the Rooster Popper did the trick. first cast I hooked another fish with what at first looked like a shark right on it's tail but on closer inspection it was a large GT. Once landed it was again Ron's turn and his first cast saw a huge miss that got the blood pumping. On his second cast he had only just flipped the bail arm and the lure was engulfed by the train. It was exit stage left and was quite funny watching Ron helpless as line peeled of the spool until the GT finally ran him through the coral.
That was the end of proceedings as the other lures simply did not provide the righ action. It was very interesting as once you put the Rooster in the zone it was hit Nd hit straight away while the others did not raise a sniff. It wash also interesting doing this with jigging rods! Mind you they worked the Rooster popper very well.
Note to self: Always leave the popper rod in the boat with the lures to boot. We may have even stopped that last fish as well.
