Hi all, myself and Warwick managed to get out for a trip the other day. Met at the marina at 4, made it to our first spot with a bit over an hour of run out to fish.
First few casts were a good warm up, I was running a Skipjack 150 and Warwick a homemade stickbait, no action though. Then we both fired out a cast at roughly the same time - our lures splashed down within a couple of seconds of each other and about 50cm apart...2 seconds later, and pretty much before either of us had starting working our lures we were both hooked up solid! We must have landed right on top of them! And then it all happened (Mick will be saying "I told you so" about now). My GT Special had always been a tight fit at the join and it had a fair bit of the top half sticking out at the join. It had been so long since I had it apart that I had really forgotten how much was actually inside the join, Mick pointed it out on a previous trip but it wasn't really a concern as I had gone my whole Nomad trip catching fish with it together like that. Anyway I lent back solid on the hookup and BANG...rod in two pieces. Tried fighting the fish off the reel but no dice. In the ensuing confusion Warwick also dropped his fish - argh. Turned out my rod hadn't snapped as suspected but rather the butt join had become deformed and split a bit causing the top half to fly out. This was fixed by shaving it down with a knife and lubing it up with some 2 stroke oil followed by banging it back together on the deck...completely ghetto but it got me fishing again. So i'm in the market for a new rod and now have myself a loaner outfit
Turns out there was less than an inch of the top half inserted into the butt
Anyway we kept fishing, it was all happening. I was first to hookup with a follow and strike right at the boat. Warwick then had a pack of about 7 fish chase and his lure all the way back to the boat and was unlucky not to hook up. Let that spot rest for a while and then fished it from the other side, same pack of 7 or more fish and then Warwick came up solid. One fish all. We had a few more follows but no more hookups. I also had a crazy mackeral strike - this thing was a beast, easily 20+kg i'd say, it took my skipjack and launched about 3m into the air about 15 metres away from the boat. I missed the hookup and semi stunned started winding the lure back to the boat - BAM same strike about 5 metres from the boat, it must have turned on the spot and came back to find it's missed chance at a feed...missed the hookup again but far out it was nearly the highlight of the day.
They was various other goings on throughout the day, plenty of follows (we would have seen 20+ GT's for the day), many of them following at a distance though. We ended up with 2 more GTs in the boat but they were babies. So much bait around, we managed a couple of dart, a mack tuna another sort of tuna, stripies, some crazy long tom strikes and bust offs on what would have been some nice reefies on SP's, we were fishing too light though. Interesting on the GT front is how we always fished one stickbait and one popper between us. Warwicks last two fish were raised and missed on the popper by me but hooked up within the next 15 seconds on his stickbait.
We then headed for home and stopped off at a new mark on the way back to do some jigging. Before the fishing though i've got a gripe...we were in the middle of nowhere, had seen maybe 3 other boats all day and we pull up on this mark - 10 minutes later this boat comes from nowhere, goes past us, circles back and pulls up maybe 30-40m away and then leaves. The only explanation being that he had punched the mark into his GPS and then carried on his way WTF! Does this happen a lot? Damn rude if you ask me and nothing you can really do about it? Anyway we sounded some bait and hooked up from the first drop! I was having some trouble getting the fish to the boat argh but Warwick snagged a nice mack for dinner and then we had some fun on some trevally, not exactly sure what type they are but they put up a good fight and it was a fun way to end the trip.
Bout time we got into some fish - good day out, no big Gt's but some fun action.
