Last Sunday I have just moved to Toowoomba for work for a two year contract, this is the first time I have ever lived out of the Redlands or any more than 15 minutes from the water. In the process of moving up here which was a bit of a whirl wind, 2 weeks from being asked to move to actually living here, I decided to make a few ground rules for fishing on my days off. Knowing that it was a 2 hour drive to get back to Brisbane to fish, (and where my boat is being stored) I thought it would be sensible not to fish on my second day off, as would be shattered the next day for work and also never drive down or back in the dark.
Well after sitting watching Bathurst all day Sunday (not much else to do in Toowoomba), looked at the weather forecast and saw it was pretty good for monday, thought try and get myself another local GT. Thought what the hell, my two main fishing rules broken after only being up here for 6 days, not much point keeping them any more
Gave a couple of my mates a quick call Sunday and the trip was on, now just had to drive two bloody hours, then pick the boat up, that night. Well at 4am we met at the cleveland boat ramp to be met by no wind at all, all looked very promising. Travelled across a glassed out bay, in the dark and was greeted by first sunlight upon reaching south passage bar, if you could call it a bar, also glassed out with a big run in tide.
Decision was made to pop first so decided to try some of the reefs in close to Straddie, whales every where on the way out which is cool the first time you see them but when you are on plane doing 50ks per hour the thought of hitting one keeps me a little uneasy.
At the first mark and first drift I chuck out my plastic combo with my favourite GT plastic and jig head and I get smashed, 15 minutes after chasing it all around the place he just spat the hook. Funny enough Matty and Nathan change over to plastics straight away and after not much time Matty is now hooked up to a good GT, but same result just spat the hook..
Nathan is chucking around his favourite Nomad Skipjack and gets a good strike on the surface from a GT but no hook up. After this it got a little blurry can't remember what went on it what order, but I can remember, Nathan lost 2 GT's, a yellow fin tuna and a huge mackeral, Matty lost a GT and a yellow fin and I had already lost a GT from first up. This was all with 2 hours of being out there.
With all of the action going on, I decided natural colours where working the best, so took off my favourite FCL lure (panic trout) and chucked on a silver skip jack. I saw a school of small tuna working not far off the boat so chucked a cast in. Out of the middle of it a beast from the sea comes up and swallows the stick bait whole, from that point onwards it was just a whole lot of pain.
As usual he went straight for the bottom to try and bust me off on the reef, I run heavy drag on my popping combo and this meant that I almost got levered over the side of the boat. I have a rail around the front of my boat for this very reason, but it was not helping this time, this fish was putting more pressure on me than any other fish I had fought. After a hectic and furious battle finally I saw colour and it was like I was lifting a dinner table up through the water column. He was big, Matty and Nathan struggled to lift him into the boat and it was high fives all round, I was shattered.
New GT pb 37kg, weapon of choice, Fcl Labo rod matched with Stella 10000sw, only problem is photos don't do it justice, it was a solid fish. As you can see in a few of the photos I was destroyed after this fish. We had a few more drifts and and decided to call it a day, we all had a good morning even though I think the tally was 8 lost to 1 landed.
All in all a good day, so much for my Toowoomba rules, from now on if the weather is good enough I will be there, and it is only 103 weekends and I will be back. For any one who wants to know, the water temp was 20.8 degrees, come on summer pelagic season should be a cracker of a popping and jigging season.
Andrew
