Bugatti Reef Lagoon Explorer 20 Aug 2011:
Damon:- I saw a reef today when flying in that I had never fished before. Went straight back to it once the guys loaded onto the boat at 10:30am and within 3 casts we had our first GT hooked up. A nice 25kg fish to start the trip. Very happy with that!! But things got better from there. We had a hectic 3 hour session where we released 12 GTs from a LOT of hookups and bites, with the best GT landed a solid 30kg specimen. We finished the session with the biggest Spanish mackerel I have ever seen, that kept Chris busy for 15 minutes on the heavy GT gear, and gave him a serious hiding with the GT drag, huge long runs and down deep fighting. We managed to get the fish into the boat for pictures and then released what we estimated to be a Spanish mackerel no smaller than 40kg. A truly massive fish that was about 6 and a half feet long and had a head like a dogtooth tuna. The weather was perfect and the fish were biting hard, a sensational start to the trip, and if we can have even one more day like that this week I'll be very happy.
Clint: Was nice to be back on the reef today after a two week break. The conditions looked ideal from the plane with very light winds. We started fishing around 2pm and with the last of the run in hooked a nice fish from a shoal on a skip jack unfortunately this one got away. The next ledge we hit one of the boys' gobies got smashed by another good size Gt this thing was going nuts around some bombies. Crazly trying to drive this thing off the reef the hooks pulled bummer. Nice bit of action to start the week. Blue holing can't wait til tomorrow will keep you posted.
Glanville:- Change over day today and I had a small chance to get out for a sniff with the guys from the previous week and we managed to get a quick GT and a mackerel to the boat before we had to run back for the plane, the next bunch of guys were keen as and had their tackle rigged in a heart beat, I headed out for round 2 with Brandon, Kasey and Paul in search of a big fish in some blue holes, it didn't take long and Kasey was bent in action, little interesting though, it turned out to be a giant chinaman that grabbed his big nambas, the fish buried him in the reef and Kasey decided to jump off the boat and go hunt the fish down...he managed to find the chinaman sitting in the reef with the big nambas as a trophy, he chased it around but lost the battle at the end of the day, we continued our venture and managed to find a fish in a very good looking blue hole, this beast came and climbed all over Paul's goby but unfortunately never hooked up, about 10min later it was Brandon's turn, this mammoth of a creature came up and had a go at his skipping pencil and again never hooked up, both very decent sized fish, waiting to catch them tomorrow, we ended off the day with some insane longtail action which we brought home for some sashimi which went down a treat.
John Dory:- With a new set of enthusiasts flying in this morning the guys were keen to get stuck into some fishing, Brendan, Cai and Sam were straight into the action with an explosive strike in a blue hole that failed to stay hooked but it was a cracker way to start, 2 blue holes later and Sam was on again this time the hooks stuck and we got right on top of the fish before in the blink of an eye it cut us off 0 for 2 in blue holes, a short time later Brendan had the most bizarre capture, he hooked a monster trout in the shallows that had him working overtime to keep under control when the hooks suddenly fell out, upon retrieval we pulled up a nomad Cubera 125 with about 3m of 200lb leader attached to Brendans lure this fish must have been dragging this lure around for quite some time as it had moss growing on it, one more hook up for the day resulted in a nice GT falling off Cai's popper, all in all plenty of highlights in a fishless day tomorrow the tide will turn.
