Hamilton Island

[nabs]

Hey guys

I will be on Hamilton Island next week and am planning to get a fair bit of fishing done.
Just wanted to know if anyone here has fished it and if you got any tips for fishing the place. Im guessing there will be GTs and other pelagics about. I will be landbased but may hire out a tinny if it doesnt cost me an arm and a leg.
If you got any tips on fishing the place, let me know. It would be a great help.

Cheers

[DonPaullo]

Was up there a month ago and had a great time.

Landbased is a bit tough, but the dinghy hire is only $90 for the half day and well worth it. Took the hire dinghy out two days and caught some good sweetlip, small red emperor and a very nice coral trout.

Dont be afraid to take some heavy tackle. Missed four strikes with 30lb braid failing twice and 100lb leader bitten through the other two times. Next time I will be using wire.

We trolled hard bodies and fished the bottom with squid/pillies.

The third day we hired the Renegade boat for a morning and casted stickbaits for GTs with no luck.

We landed a 8kg Spaniard on a livey and some assorted small reef fish after getting too tired casting huge lures.

I think the supplied reels on the charter boat were stocked with 100lb braid. There are some monsters up there.

[bustastu]

If you hire the tinny, there are some good bommies at the entrance to Gulnare Inlet on the western side that come up to about 8m at high tide. Otherwise there a nice reef ledge north of the marina entrance just off the no anchorage sign. Its directly opposite Plum Pudding Island for a few table size sweetlip. The dinghy hire obviously has boundaries to where you can travel to. The Regegade charter hire is also good and they normally head out to the Edward Island Group. Let us know how you go.

[stonecold]

G'Day nabs, Ive had a couple of simlar trips to Hamilton. I can tell you that I caught more fish in the tinny than I did with the charters....on both occasions.

Land based I found the commercial marina handy with queenies and trevs mostly on poppers first thing in the morning before the traffic got up. There is a little beach on the inside of the marina which makes it really easy to fish. You can access it from near the airport terminal.

The entrance to the harbour is also good and the turn of the run out tide.

With regard to the tinny as Dan says about $90 for half a day (4hrs). The reef just out from plum pudding island was good and if your into S.P and poppers we headed all the way up to the northern end of the allowable limit where I found some reef outcrops. The bommies sit in the entrance to a couple of shallow bays. You should be able to find them easily. We scored legal trout, queenies and trevs of assorted sp.
The tinnies are equipped with 8hp O/B (i think) anyway they are bl#ody slow so you need to allow about 35-40 minutes to get back to the marina.

Good luck

[nabs]

Thanks everyone for the input,
I will definately hire out a tinny one of the days im there. I have no idea about the area so I suppose I'll just head out of the marina (if thats where you can hire the tinnys from) and look for some sort of reefey structure.

The rest of the time Iam there I will fish landbased and again just look for any decent looking structure and start throwing poppers and SPs around.

Cheers