rowley shoals october 2011

[chris coates]

Day 2
After waking up a 3am!! And cranking tunes on the pod for a few hours I got up with everyone and got breakfast at around 6 having to meet a taxi at 7:30 to take us on our adventure.
 
After arriving on the jetty we met the boats crew of skipper Bruce decks Dave and addam and cook sheree.  We quickly loaded the tender and put all thorts of work out of our minds. It was happening we were on the boat on our way to The Rowlie Sholes. 
  We had a quick breafing on safety gear and the usual speel and then some of the site specific rules and regs and we were off on the 20hour boat ride. We trolled a skirt while on our way out with little successes two Spanish mackerel and a wahoo.
 


We settled into the drone of the diesel engine and the rocking of the sea and awaited the morning to come.
 
Day 3
After a hot and restless sleep I awoke at 5am to find everyone up and about preparing gear and double checking leader knots we were there!!!
Our first day mainly consisted of figuring out the area we in witch was the middle reef named clerk. We traled about for a while with minimal successes ray and Vern pulling a few barracuda. I tried trolling a big stickbait (heru bombora) witch got a laf out of the addam our guide but within minutes I had a hit admittedly it was only a small barracouta but it brought in a small dogtooth tuna witch met its downfall on the old white snapback (an ever present soft plastic in my box and perhaps my favourite lure of all time) thrown in buy my mate Kurt.
 

I ended the day with a bit of a flick about with the 25lb gear and somehow pulling up a nice rass.
 


 
So with this amazing capture we decided to become devoted trollers tomorrow and take the big boat out. We decided me Kurt dad and frog would be on the big boat and the others on the tender.
Day 5
After brekky the tender boys went out and got to the troll with us on the big boat not far behind.
 
We got off to a good start with a Spanish mackerel hooked and dropped at the boat and shortly after two mak tuna coming on board.
 

[Nathan Cefai]

Nice report,thanks for sharing mate some good fish caught,id say the fish is between 30kg to 35kg possibly..Fat fish good condition to

[Jay Burgess]

Thanks for the report Chris, Rowleys is a very special place and for reasons I cannot explain, still one of my favourite locations I've ever fished.

I agree with Nathan regarding the size of the fish, 30-35kg would be close to the mark.

[chris coates]

Yeh it is defiantly a special place was a little unfortunate about the lack of tuna, Spanish Mack and warhoo while on the troll but that's fishing .
Id like to disagree with you about the fish but not having been able to weigh the it properly there is no point and its a good thing anyway because the big boy is still out there and i defiantly have the GT fever ill get a bigger one next trip and call that 50 haha.
chears Jay & Nathan

[Mark Harris]

Well done Chris  .

Just a tip - if you want people to estimate fish weights, do a dead square front-on photo. It is incredibly difficult when the fish is at an angle to the camera!

[Jay Burgess]

Yeh it is defiantly a special place was a little unfortunate about the lack of tuna, Spanish Mack and warhoo while on the troll but that's fishing .
Id like to disagree with you about the fish but not having been able to weigh the it properly there is no point and its a good thing anyway because the big boy is still out there and i defiantly have the GT fever ill get a bigger one next trip and call that 50 haha.
chears Jay & Nathan

Not a problem Chris, everyone has their own oppinion. For your information, the one you can see in Nathans avatar is a 50kg fish so gives you some comparison.