Whitsundays plastic fishathon

[Matty_M]

Hey Guys,

Charged up to the Whitsundays last weekend with Trent and Richard and had a ball. We fished mainly the edges of islands and reef dropoffs using only plastics, accept when chasin big GT'S.

It was the first time we had fished up there and definately won't be the last. Two days in the tinnie we managed 8 Coral Trout (only 3 legal) 10 Grassy's, Yellowtail Sweetlip, Spangeled Emperor, Maori Wrasse, Gt, Queenie, Flowery Cod, Chinaman Fish, about 20 different spp in total.

Best plastic was the squidgy about 70mm on a 3/8 jighead, Squidgy's easily out performed Jerkshads, although they did manade a few fish. We mainly fished 10lb gear with 40lb leader. The big Gt came on a metal, after watching them chase in a popper.

Absolute magic fishing destination, catching fish was just a bonus, the scenery was unreal. We saw just 2 other boat fishing in 2 days, on a sun/mon with perfect weather, can't beat that.;D

Cheers

[ffejsmada]

Excellent Matty, you and the boys did real well!

Great GT, surely you didn't get that on 10lb???

Top looking Chinaman.

Cheers, Jeff.

[jaredluke]

Great fish matty, what reel and sized reel were you using?

[SummerTrance]

Thats looks magic up there, and a great couple days fishing. Something i'd like to do in the next few years. How easy is it to access those fishing areas from the mainland?

[Pistol_P]

Magic stuff Mat,

I just love it up there.....You may have just fired me up for another trip..:P

Pete

[jackextracter]

Great report guys looks like yous had a ball jigging there how deep were yous jigging most of the time?

[jtpython]

Great stuff guys and the pics are perfect and quality fish to boot
Looks ass the conditions were perfect and calamari awesome stuff
JT

[plaztix]

Some top quality fish there mate. Sounds like a cracker of a weekend.

Summertrance, the outer islands are around only 20 minutes from the mainland. There are so many islands, inlets and drop offs up there you'd be hard pressed picking a bad spot. It is truly a fishermans paradise.

[Matty_M]

Cheers Guys,

Jeff- The GT was caught on 20lb Braid, 4000 Reel.
Jared- We were using 3000 and 4000 spinning reels.
Summertrance - I'm pretty sure there are 2 boat ramps, Abel Point and Shute Harbour. We left from Shute which is probably a bit closer to get out to where we were fishing arounf Hook Island, it took us about 45mins to get out there, weather was perfect though. There are islands a lot closer in, 5-10 mins away.

Jackextractor - Transducer was playing up, so not sure exactly how deep we were fishing, the reef probably dropped down to about 20-30feet. We just looked for fishy looking dropoffs, preferably reef edges which were quite defined which allowed you to jig the plastic down the face of the reef with a little bit of confidence you weren't going to snag up.....We stil lost sh**tloads of gear, and ran out of jigheads.

Cheers

[For Steve]

What an awesome trip. I can't wait to get back there one day. Nice pics too - that GT is a screamer.

Cheers
Brad

[Benno1]

fantastic...nuff said :D
(Mrs Benno1)

[whatscracken]

Great photos and a good read Matt.

[Richard]

That coral trout that I'm holding in the first photo there was an interesting capture. Not the fact that it's a trout but because of the cod that tried to grab it as I got close to the boat.

If you look closely you can see the grab marks down near the tail and when the cod let go there, he had another go at the head. Amazing as the cod was only about another 1/2 again of the trouts length. We couldn't believe what we were seeing.

Jared - I was mainly using a Shimano Symetre 2500 with 10lb on a Berkley DropShot 2-4kg rod..

Here's a few more scenic pics of the weekend..


Richard

[Richard]

Hi Summertrance,

If you want to work out how far you have to travel, it's about a 12nm run from the boat ramp at Shute Harbour to the passage between Whitsunday and Hook Islands and we averaged about 40-45nm each day with the additional running around. Not sure how much of that though was with the electric.

Once you get to the spots because there are so many islands (74) you can usually find a protected bay doesn't matter which way the wind is blowing.


Richard

[nuggstar]

hooowaaa what a fricking huge gt. awsome post dude

[Flex]

Damn you guys were lucky, I went to whitsundays 2 years ago for 3 weeks and everyday bar 2 it was blowing 20 knots. We only managed to get across the channel 3 times. One of those attempts was very dodgy in a 4.5m boat.

Did you get that GT in Hook passage? between hook and whitsunday Island? Cause I saw and caught a few huge! GT's there every morning we made it across.

Very nice effort, did you manage to fish the eastern side of whitsunday Island? I found far more fish on this side specially north of whitehaven along rocky outcrops.

Looks like you had a ball

[Richard]

Yeah Flex,

Trent caught that GT right in the middle of the passage amongst all the swirling eddies. Matty had one about the same size chase a popper in and it had a go at it right at the boat not long before Trent caught his. I did manage squat :(

We didn't get around the eastern side of Whitsunday this time but have been told about it by someone else as well. There's also some really nice dropoffs and rocks we've seen on the charts (up off the north eatern side of Hook) since our trip there that we want to target so, as Matty said, it definately won't be our last trip up there. Weather is looking good for this weekend :D


Richard

[straddy77]

hey u got some really nice fish there mate. im heading up there for a couple of weeks today, so hope i can get onto some good fish as well. and also some good weather!!!!