Hi all,
I am relatively new to the sport of popping for GT's, but certainly not new to sportsfishing...
I had been planning a trip with my old man and a few mates, to fish my new hometown of Gladstone. We planned to fish for a week straight whilst my three little munchkins and my beautiful wife were in Brisbane visiting their Grandparents.
By Tuesday night, my best mate Pricey had arrived... and we began to talk tactics for the following day. After 150 looks at Seabreeze and the BOM website, we had decided to hit the offshore Islands in search of some GT's. The next morning was a 4 am start, as we couldn't get to the grounds quick enough... By 7am we were scouting the Island for tell tale signs of Pelagic activity. The fishing started slow as the tide was dead, and we began to grow restless... signs of bait and movement began to appear by 9am, and we knew it was only a matter of time.
We positioned the boat outside of a point, where a huge rip had begun to form, letting us cast both sides of the point bringing the popper across the rock face..as close as possible to the rock and reef. Within three casts, Pricey's lure was exploded on by a fish around 30kg.. great boat manouvering by the old man, and good angling on Pricey's part, saw the fish in the boat in 15 mins.
A few snaps and a good release, saw me take the front deck of the Galeforce.. just 2 casts in and I had a 30+ kg speciment cartwheel in the air with my popper in it's mouth, unfortunately the hooks came lose after 10 seconds and that fish got the better of me.
Several more casts saw more follows and explosions, but It just wouldn't come off for me, so pricey joined me on the front deck.... 2 cast in, and he was tightly connected to a smaller but powerful fish of around 15 to 20kg, which was also shortly landed.
By midday I was getting frustrated, and the tide had bottommed out... so we stopped for lunch and mucked around with some Queenfish on plastics. 2pm saw a whole new perspective, as we now had a making tide... and spots that looked unlikely before, now looked better than ever. It didn't take long to prove our theory, and we were shorly connected to a double, luckily Pricey's fish pulled free and dad was able to help drag the fish to open water. Another good fish was boated an released within 15 minutes, I was stoked !! and we were back to casting in minutes... many more follows later and Pricey was again connected to a solid fish, unfortunately this one found the reef and that was that.
We headed for home shortly after, with grins ear to ear and a thought of getting to the tackle shop before 5pm to replenish our supply of poppers.
Unfortunately due to weather, we only had another half day back at this spot... and a half day at another spot, where we donated many more lures to the reef !!!
We spent the rest of the week fishing for Fingermark and Barra, due to strong winds.... only dreaming of our next trip on the poppers !!
Justin.
