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Graham Stevenson

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Bligh Reef with Nomad September 23-29
October 02, 2009, 01:27:06 PM
Just got back to NZ after Nomad trip to Bligh reef over the last week of September . Flew to Cairns then onto Lockhart River ( 1 and a half hours north) and then by road (1/2 an hour or a bit longer if you're not the local driver !) by Road to Portland Roads.
Then onto Mother ship which was anchored off shore and after lunch into the 6 metre boats for a fish on the way out to the reef . Didn't get past the first point before we had a session on the longtails and then onto the reef itself for the usual pop till you drop. took the mother ship about 3 hours to get to the anchorage whilst we popper fished away the afternoon.
Unfortunately I don't have the technology nor expertise to upload photos from the Nomad disc for the week , so will have to give a generalised description . My abiding memory of the week was the variety of species we caught. In no particular order and my own catchs only the following species were accounted for - Longtail , Tuna, GT, Blue fin Trevally , Tea Leaf Trevally , Big Eye Trevally, Coral trout (all colours and sizes ), red bass , Various Cods , Jobfish (2 colours) , Spanish mackerel, Shark Mackerel, Scad , rainbow runner , maori Wrasse , various Emperors. also had a number of Dogtooth encounters (a couple were landed by other anglers) and a brief black marlin hook up whilst we were having a lazy troll between reef entrances.
As far as popping goes we caught plenty of Gt's up to probably 30 Kg's and dropped a few larger ones mainly in the shallows .Alos caught a lot of Blue Fin trevally up to about 8 Kg. Most of the fish were caught on 100 to 125 gm Poppers and Stick Baits. Some of the Coral trout were huge and Red bass were prolific - we had a number of floating bommies of these. One highlight for me was catching a 25 kg plus Maori wrasse on a popper - had never caught one before and caught 3 in total.
Weather conditions were generally favourable -about 15 to 20 Knots and made a couple of the reef passes accessible for jigging where we found a number of dogtooth, most of which took my jigs for souvenirs !
We really only covered a small part of the reef and I'm looking at how to get there again next year. Usual top class service  from Nomad and the South african connection ! some unusual culinary experiences - Kangaroo and Crocodile !

Andre van Wyk

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Re: Bligh Reef with Nomad September 23-29
October 02, 2009, 06:56:28 PM
Hi Graham,

Sounds like an awesome trip mate, congrats!!

Here is a pretty easy step by step on how to post pics I did on our local forum if you're interested:

http://www.sealine.co.za/view_topic.php?id=10684&forum_id=17&jump_to=140741#p140741


Admin please remove this if its not cool to post a link to another forum, I can't just copy and paste the topic as the edit function won't let me view the codes, so I'd have to reload all the images...

Thanks

To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth...

Brandon Khoo

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Re: Bligh Reef with Nomad September 23-29
October 03, 2009, 06:55:36 AM
Andre - if you don't mind, I am going to put a sticky up with this link.
Is that all right?
If it swims; I want to catch it!

Andre van Wyk

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Re: Bligh Reef with Nomad September 23-29
October 03, 2009, 09:45:18 PM
No worries Brandon, with pleasure mate.
To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth...