Here it is, planned a fishing trip up at Cardwell over the weekend. Weather reports all week were looking favourable and then it happened!!!!
Just as the weekend in drawing near the reports are looking like a new front coming through on Sunday and creeping into Saturday, Not Good!!!!
Get up to Cardwell late arvo on Friday, weather looks excellent, lady at Beachcombers says "last 2 days have been excellent weather", LALALALALALALA not listening...
Park the boat and meet up the rest of the guys who are up for the weekend (the Mackinator stayed home for this one, more on this later). So I have 2 new deckies, Craig and his son William. We discuss what we intend to do in the morning. It is agree that it will be a 2am start and back by lunch. Sounds good.
Early to bed and then the Mackinator rings me at 10pm and I hang up on her thinking its the alarm on my mobile, not funny!!! Ring her back and she apologies for waking me (Phew, got out of that one). Anyway the alarm goes off at 2am, everyone is woken and the boat is readied. We launch with another mates boat and head out to Kennedy Shoals, slow going as there was a bit of a swell, but we eventually make it out there and set up. Its lump and windy, not a good sign for 3:30am lines go in and we get a few bites but nothing special. A few smaller Moses Perch and Stipeys find a way into the bucket for slab baits. So as the sun comes up we still haven't got any keepers.
So we move to a favourite wreck and after a few drops we have some nice Nannygai in the boat. Craig gets thumped by a monster which in turn snags him on the wreck and he has to cut off after trying to drag the wreck off the bottom for 5 mins. The wind and swell gradually increase until its upwards of 15kts with backless 2 metre swell giving us the grief. Just as we were about to get the anchor up, my line takes a big hit and the drag is humming. Sinking the hook in, I begin the fight and immediately ask for the gimbel belt. After the tug of war for 10 minutes, up comes the stonker of a Cobia, a couple of dives and short runs and he is up beside the boat and into the net. The hook pops as he hits the deck!!!!
Put him on the scales and he comes in at 18.5kg and 112cm in length, my best yet. We all look at each other and decide to get the hell out of dodge while we still can... We start to head back and decide that the seas are a little to rough to get up on the plane, so we decide to troll (no Mackinator in the boat). I managed to wrestle her favourite rod and lure off her for the trip, anyway out it goes. After about 15mins on slow troll, Craig pulls a Mack into the boat, no big but they are around. 5 minutes later My/Mackinators rod goes off and twang the line snaps despatching her lure to who knows where (no I am in the shit, Macks lure is lost).
So, we pull the gear and get the boat up to something comfortable and head back to the bay. After stopping at Sail Rock and pulling a few Tealeaf Trevs, we head off home to the ramp.
Sunday wasn't much better with the weather worse, so with extra bait in the boat, we head for Gould Island and I find a patch of reef and some nice shows on the bottom. For the next 2 hours we pull Nannygai after Nannygai out of the water and all between 35 and 39cm. No keepers but lots of fun and Craig's son William had a ball. After that it was a quick run back to Cardwell pack up and head home.
I now have some new areas to fish for the Meet and Greet over the Queens Birthday weekend, so I should have more fun next time and the weather and the Mackinator will hopefully come to the party as well.
BTW my mate who headed out with me on Saturday morning, was about 1 KM away on the shoals in some deeper water and cleaned up on Nanny's and Red Throat. Next time, Next time, Next time!!!!
Oh Yeah, found a tackle shop on the way home and replaced the Mackinators lure with an exact model, only newer without all the bite and gouge marks, apparently they are extra...
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We ended up with 2x Spanish Macks around the 90cm, 1x Cobia @ just over 1Mt, 1x Reef Jack, 4x Red Throat & the rest are Nanny's. We also caught and released undersized Red Emperor, numerous Trev's of differing species, other mixed reef fish and 5 or 6 big Bat Fish (they pull hard for their size). We got busted up a couple of times and straightened out 2 hooks.
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