I've had my boat for a few months now and after a few local trips with no result GT wise I was starting to wonder when/how I was going to land one on the deck
Woke up Wednesday morning and we had a window of 12hours with 5knotts northerly wind so the call was made, Patrick was at my place before he had hung up! Loaded the gear and launched at about 9:30am and opened the throttle.
We arrived at the first location only to find 8 other boats hanging around. Luckily they were out away from the bar we wanted to pop so out came the weapons, my Kaiser Bali GT rod and fresh off the drying rack my Saltywater Race Point. Matched to the rods were a Saltiga Z6000GT and a Stella 10000FA with a 20k spool.
The first drift showed nothing, second drift follow, third drift Pat had 5 GT climbing over each other for his popper and I had 2 after mine. Pat had about 5m of line pulled out and then nothing, hooks failed to find the target. The 2 after my popper swiped all the way to the boat and I was out of room, all I could do was pause and it payed off with 1 GT doubling back and finding my hooks. A short fight followed even though the fish fought above his weight, the Race Point made short work of him. First GT on board Yew!
Another 3 drifts showed nothing so we headed further on to location #2 where no GT were to be seen but rather large Queenfish which smoked me on a soft plastic before I had a chance to think about it.
Location 3 was slack tide so we had lunch and decided to go further than we had planned for a look, we only found dirty water which went 5k off shore.
Back to #3 for cleaner water, sunset and a quick troll which resulted in a great size mack and 2 longtail tuna. Since we had dinner it was off to the camping spot and shelter from the rising wind.
The wind did rise, much more than the predicted 20 knotts (a yacht reported 30knt gusting to 38 in our location) which made popping anywhere extremely hazardous for us so unfortunately we had to make the journey home stopping only for a troll around location #2 which I managed to pick up one of the queenies that dusted me the day before and he would have measured over 1.1m.
Home it was. We had covered over 230km for the trip and even though we didn't land heaps of fish it was a great trip and good to see a few spots I haven't seen in a while. It was also a great test for the boat which handled the seas much better than I thought it would.
I don't have many pics to share, my camera died not long ago and I am yet to get a replacement. The pics here were taken from my phone
