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This report is a week or so late but I've been waiting for some photos and still haven't got that many.
Some of the boys I go to North West Island with asked me to do a Fraser trip with the boats this year. None of us have big boats at the moment but we took what we had. A 5.2m ally runabout, a 4.2 m ally runabout, a 4.2m home built clinker style centre console and my 5m open dingy.
We were hoping for good weather obviously but alas it didn't really turn out that way.
We met Phil and Rob on the way. They were telling us of the inclement weather they'd faced in the week before and it looked like it was going to continue.
We stayed at a great place at Orchid - 3 story, two kitchen, three bathroom, sleeps 10 and only $1500 a week. Absolute bargain.
Arrived Saturday - met up with Murf and his crew on their way back in. We opted to go offshore Sunday but ended up pulling the pin on Sunday morning. Murf's crew went and the conditions weren't that bad and they landed good fish. Bugger. We beached fished for bream, tarwine, whiting and dart up around Ngala.
Monday - it was offshore - weather was 15-20 with seas 2m. We went 14km north and it took 1.5 hours. Every wave sprayed the boat and the bilge pump was working well. Once on the grounds the fish were constant. One deckie went down without putting a fish in the esky, the other struggled in the rough conditions. I went through 6 packets of 7 inch Gulps in 50mins as the Red throat committed suicide. The rough conditions meant it was hard to feel the take and I lost a lot of tails before I even knew I was near the bottom. We nearly filled the eski with RTE, parrot, wrasse, coronation trout. No stand out fish.
The other boats all fished south of us for good catches of mixed reef fish but a lot of deckies went down in the rough weather probably reducing the catch rate.
Tuesday, I went out again early. The boys rang me on the VHF and I told them the conditions were worse than yesterday so they opted not to come out. We were alone in a big sea. Got to give credit to my deckie Chris who hadn't done a lot of offshore fishing but threw himself at the conditions and asked for more. He didn't mind being constantly wet and violently thrown around in the dinghy. We punched right up to the northern marks again but the big current and the 25knot+ winds had us drifting at nearly 3 knots. Fishing was extremely hard. We put about 12 fish in the eski and the waves just got bigger so we decided to pull the pin after a couple of hours. To give you an idea of the ride home with a following sea. Surfing the waves I'd throttle back to idle and just tiller steer her in the right direction - we were still doing 19knots for a few minutes until we eventually smashed into the back of the wave in front of us and almost came to a halt. This was the story for around an hour. It was that rough that the anchor well broke through completely and finished in the bottom of the boat letting even more water in. It sure was fun. Only one other trailer on the beach when we got in.
The other boys headed over to Watumba but the whiting weren't really playing over there.
Wednesday we went to the Cape and watched some Spanish cruise after mullet schools only 5m from the beach. The whiting went missing again. It also rained a lot.
Thursday I had to head home early to fly to Melbourne. Chris came back with me.
On Friday the weather was excellent and the boys got out to brain the reefies. I think all boats bagged out on parrot and a lot of other reefies made it onboard. A couple of jobbies were landed. They were east of Indian Head and had heard of Spanish being caught between Indian and Waddy. They trolled lures home and Robbie landed a nice Spanish.
All in all a great trip. I've got to say our resident chef John put up more food in 4 days than I would eat in a week. A few ales were consumed and I must apologise to Murf for not getting down to the pub for a beer but we always seemed to be in different places.
Thanks to Chris Butterworth for the invite and all the boys for the company. hopefully we can do it again.
Thanks also to Smithy for some marks. Those northern marks sure hold the RTE.
when we caught up with you on the Monday (where the lone Reds roam) out on North Gardiners you def looked soaked I jumped in with Sarge that day in his 4.75m tinny, he is fairly new to boating and very new to those conditions, it was hard to get him to trim out and go slow and enjoy the 12km/hr trip out, patience is hard when going fishing and every time he tried to speed up we were airborne and slammed with an added wash thrown in. Uses more fuel going that way but it is safe dry and comfortable
The Sarge was feeling green that day himself watching me catch all the fish until he hooked those two Jobbies and that turned him around and made for a great day
its hard to catch up when on Fraser as there is so much on all the time, at least we got a couple of Gday's in
you had the spot for the view, we could have used you as the weather man
hmmm when is the next Fraser adventure? and I mean adventure, its never boring
Ed,
There's certainly a gutter but it is quite shallow. It was fine for our small boats and was actually like being in a pond at low or half time. But the big boats would struggle to get through the shallow water at any time other than 3 hours either side of high. At high tide on a roughish day there was some swell coming into the launching area.
There's also no real entrance/exit. Again because of our small draft we could belt across the outer sandbank at most times albeit it's not fun taking on breaking waves in an open tinny.
It actually looked quite daunting coming in on the 25+ day and 2m swell. It was just white everywhere. We couldn't see any entrance. We just ducked in behind a big one and rode her in.
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I jumped in with Sarge that day in his 4.75m tinny, he is fairly new to boating and very new to those conditions, it was hard to get him to trim out and go slow and enjoy the 12km/hr trip out, patience is hard when going fishing and every time he tried to speed up we were airborne and slammed with an added wash thrown in. Uses more fuel going that way but it is safe dry and comfortable 
