This was a trip that has been some 2.5 years or more in the planning. I first spoke with Damon Olsen about the possibility of a remote trip to the far north east corner of the barrier reef and I left it with him. His proposal was Ashmore Reef. From there, it was some two years in the planning as getting the Odyssey out there as well as the logistics for getting the customers there proved to be quite challenging. Anyway, I felt it would be good to take our club, the Monster Class Anglers, away to a really remote location for one of our annual trips.
2 years passes quickly and before we knew it, we were gathering in Cairns. On the trip were myself, Malcolm Crane, George Pang, Kasey Leong, Sam Lee, Martin Exel, Patrick Coldwell, Neville Haglund, Steve Callus, Tony Fowler, Shaun Raymond and Phil Bellamy. Our guides for the week were Nick, Chad, Tim and Jason.
It is quite a journey to Ashmore - it involved a flight to Cairns and then a flight to Horn Island and then a flight to Yorke Island and then a long drive in the Odyssey. We stayed overnight at Yorke Island in the delighful Lowatta Lodge and then took over two days as we fished our way to Ashmore Reef. I'd describe the fishing from Yorke to Murray Island and along the amazing looking hard edge outside Murray as good without being exceptional. we caught the usual mix of fish you would expect in those areas - GTs, red bass, jobfish, spanish mackeral (plague proportions of them), bloody sharks (plague proportions of these too). There were plenty of GTs with the odd stonker coming up but noone had any luck on landing one of these.
On the morning of day three, we made the run across to Ashmore Reef. Everyone was full of anticipation and when we got there, well, I suppose it would be fair to say we were a pretty deflated lot that evening. We found current, we found bait but we also found that excepting the sharks that were there is absolute plague proportions, we found little else. A few GTs were landed but by and large, the GT population were nowhere to be found. I suggested to my boat that we go toss smaller lures on the flats and we had a great time for the last sixty minutes but nothing could overcome a real sense of deflation that we had come so far for so little. I actually felt terrible that night - I had pushed for a highly remote location and Damon had found one with two more groups to come after us and the place had fished like a desert.
Anyway, that evening, my guide for the next day, Tim Baker said we have a plan for tomorrow and he seemed confident. Day four saw us up early in the searing heat and we were off. We found heaps for fusiliers near the Odyssey and before long, we were into the GTs. We landed about ten GTs in very short time but I was disappointed to lose a huge fish after we had gotten ourselves into a good position after chasing the fish for a few hundred metres. The fish would have spooled me if we had not given chase. We then made a long run to another location where Jason had reported seeing a mobile bommie of GTs. Before we even got a cast in, we sighted birds in the distance and we were off chasing yellowfin. This was one of the highlights of the trip! In a short session, we landed ten fish ranging from around 20-40kg. I unfortunately had a very big fish that looked about 60kg sharked just under the boat by a huge oceanic white tip. The fish had got me down to the metal where I had about ten metres of line left before I managed to stop it!
After the mayhem of the yellowfin, we moved to another location where we GTs started coming on board very regularly. Still, that gave little sign of what was about to happen. As we were about to boat a GT, we saw it was being trailed by a couple of others and then looking down, we realised that there were actually a school of maybe a hundred or more GTs under the boat. About the same time, two of the other boats turned up and it was on. There were mobile bommies everywhere. I have no idea how many GTs there were in that locations but it would have had to number in the thousands.
I can't really do justice by describing what happened that afternoon. The GTs were on to the point where it was ridiculous. There were times when all nine anglers in the three boats were hooked up at the same time.
During the mayhem, we managed to land the odd dogtooth. Neville landed a very good fish on his light outfit. I had a huge fish of about 70-80kg launch itself completely out of the water some 15-20m away from me and land on top of my popper. Unfortunately, it did not hook up but on the next cast, I hooked up onto another flying dogtooth which went deep and almost spooled me. some 15 minutes later, I got my biggest lure caught dogtooth to the boat. The fish was extremely distressed and we swam it for some fifteen minutes before Tim managed to successfully spear it back to a depth where the fish was able to swim off steadily. I don't believe in taking dogtooth or any tuna I intend to release out of the water as they are so exhausted already so I am hoping that the guys in the other boats were able to get a decent photo.
George found himself hooked to a massive GT in the middle of the session. He fought it to the point of exhaustion before the fish unfortunately found the bottom. We actually left the fish biting at the end of the day. I was so physically spent that i actually did not fish the last hour of the day so I spent it typing knots for George and Shaun who were being busted off continually!
The most amazing day's fishing in my life. Our boat caught some 80+ GTs not to mention the yellowfin, my dogtooth and the odd reefie that got into the action. It wasn't until the end of the day that I realised how close I had come to the fabled LBP trifecta for a day - that is, a 50kg GT, a 50kg yellowfin and a 50kg dogtooth.
The next day, we were out in the same location. The GTs were still there although not quite as active as the previous day. Still, if we had wanted to concentrate on those, I expect we could have had a fifty GT day. Two of the boats went exploring where Malcolm found himself hooked to one of the biggest GTs he had ever seen. the fish laughed at him, destroyed him and swam off happily! The other two boats concentrated on dogtooth. Patrick Coldwell managed to land himself a monster after it took a lure he was trolling on his jigging outfit. Steve finally managed to bag a decent fish on the jig late in the day and the rest of the guys spent their day retying jigs after being wasted time and time again. I managed to hook another big dogtooth on a popper but this time, the fish headed straight down and wasted me.
Well, before you know it, you're at the last day. Excepting one boat, the rest of us decided to focus on GTs. We found the aggregation again and landed a heap but interestingly enough, a number of us wanted to go fish for GTs away from the aggregation where it was "real" fishing. Another great day although it was comparatively quiet when we got back and fished the hardline around Murray Island. The guys that had gone jigging for dogtooth were completely destroyed!
Overall, an amazing trip primarily driven by one day. We had unbelievably good weather for the duration of our trip which is an essential for Ashmore Reef. Ashmore will be a once-of for our club. We got incredibly lucky with the fishing by finding the breeding aggregation of GTs and we got damn lucky with the weather. If the weather blows up to fifteen knots, it would be horribly uncomfortable at Ashmore. It it blew up to 20 knots or more, it is not a place I want to be.
For those of you who are thinking of booking for this trip, I really need to emphasise we got lucky. Don't expect 80 GTs days because that is a ridiculously unrealistic expectation. You can however, expect that there will be periods of very solid fishing but be prepared to lose a lot of gear to sharks.
I have added some photos from the trip but to be honest, I hardly took any myself. The other guys who went may add a few more. I have decided that unless there are good reasons to do so, I try to avoid boating a fish for the sake of a photo. To remove an exhausted fish from the water significantly reduces its chances of survival and in a trade-off between maximising its chances of survival and a photo for me, the former wins out. We did have a professional cameraman filming the trip so Nomad may well release a DVD at some point.
Anyway, one of the best trips I have ever done. My thanks to Damon and Nomad for making this possible and special thanks to Tim and Jason for specially coming out for our group. I really appreciated it, guys. Finally, thanks to my guys for making it such a memorable trip.
