finding_time
19-11-2007, 09:07 PM
Myself ,Mark Bird( thunderbird ) and Rob Stevens fished the Hervey Bay game comp on friday saturday and sunday in my kevla cat. We were part of a fleet of around thirty boats that took part with over half of these 30 feet or above. As may threads have aluded to the conditions that were forecast were far from ideal and that's what eventuated!
We traveled up to Roony's on the thursday night and camped up on the mother ship and early friday morning travelled up the inside of break sea spit to the 13 mile crossing before heading out into fairly ordinary seas ( 15 to 20 knots se) for 10 hours of billy chasing, things looked worse when our 2 early strikes didn't stay hooked for long:-[ and apart from a mac tuna it was a long boring day until we hooked and tagged a Sail fish at around 4.35 just before cease fishing!:)
If Friday was bad Saturday was bloody aweful:o the wind was stronger the seas much worse and the fishing , well ten hours of trolling produced only 2 king fish which were a non tag species. The big news on the Saturday was the boats going heavy tackle out off the shelf in 3000m of water. The fish were chewing Mojo captured a black marlin on 60kg that went 418 kg or 920lbs and if it had been 40 kg heavier Mojo would have recieved $10 000 from the h.b.g.f.c! Most of the boats fishing heavy tackle saw action whether it was blues , stripes or blacks they were chewing!
Sunday's foreast was similar to saturdays so many boats didn't back up and chased longtails around the bay rather than cop another flogging, i think my brain was a little spongy Sunday morning as i told the crew were were going out again regardless of the conditions as there was a fish to be caught some where.:-/ We were pleasently suprised by the sea after crossing the 8 mile as it resembled fridays conditions , still aweful but no where near as bad as the day before. Our plan was to fish a totally different area and it payed off. We found great bait and tagable fish, the mornings count was 4 mahi mahi( one went about 15kg), 1 wahoo, and a good black marlin ( 35kg ) landed by mark bird!:D We had a couple of other billy chances but no hook ups, and the most stubbon little yellow fin tuna busted of after about 1/2 an hour, all in all a great morning compared to the day before. All we then had to do was travel the 120 km's back to the harbour:o
Over the 3 days we covered 642 km's and used 410 liters of fuel. What a trip!!!!:D
The comp was won by Mojo a 40 blackwatch!
Ian
Ps. i'm sure Smithy will add more and correct my errors:'( :D ;D On reflection the Big black markin was caught on Friday not Saturday but my mind is not great at the moment with only 4 hours sleep thursday, friday and saturday nights and we didn't arrive back from hervey Bay untill 2.00am Monday morning , yep the mind is very slow
PPs. Pics to follow soon i hope
We traveled up to Roony's on the thursday night and camped up on the mother ship and early friday morning travelled up the inside of break sea spit to the 13 mile crossing before heading out into fairly ordinary seas ( 15 to 20 knots se) for 10 hours of billy chasing, things looked worse when our 2 early strikes didn't stay hooked for long:-[ and apart from a mac tuna it was a long boring day until we hooked and tagged a Sail fish at around 4.35 just before cease fishing!:)
If Friday was bad Saturday was bloody aweful:o the wind was stronger the seas much worse and the fishing , well ten hours of trolling produced only 2 king fish which were a non tag species. The big news on the Saturday was the boats going heavy tackle out off the shelf in 3000m of water. The fish were chewing Mojo captured a black marlin on 60kg that went 418 kg or 920lbs and if it had been 40 kg heavier Mojo would have recieved $10 000 from the h.b.g.f.c! Most of the boats fishing heavy tackle saw action whether it was blues , stripes or blacks they were chewing!
Sunday's foreast was similar to saturdays so many boats didn't back up and chased longtails around the bay rather than cop another flogging, i think my brain was a little spongy Sunday morning as i told the crew were were going out again regardless of the conditions as there was a fish to be caught some where.:-/ We were pleasently suprised by the sea after crossing the 8 mile as it resembled fridays conditions , still aweful but no where near as bad as the day before. Our plan was to fish a totally different area and it payed off. We found great bait and tagable fish, the mornings count was 4 mahi mahi( one went about 15kg), 1 wahoo, and a good black marlin ( 35kg ) landed by mark bird!:D We had a couple of other billy chances but no hook ups, and the most stubbon little yellow fin tuna busted of after about 1/2 an hour, all in all a great morning compared to the day before. All we then had to do was travel the 120 km's back to the harbour:o
Over the 3 days we covered 642 km's and used 410 liters of fuel. What a trip!!!!:D
The comp was won by Mojo a 40 blackwatch!
Ian
Ps. i'm sure Smithy will add more and correct my errors:'( :D ;D On reflection the Big black markin was caught on Friday not Saturday but my mind is not great at the moment with only 4 hours sleep thursday, friday and saturday nights and we didn't arrive back from hervey Bay untill 2.00am Monday morning , yep the mind is very slow
PPs. Pics to follow soon i hope