Well it's been a very long time between fishing trips and Ausfish reports from me for a while. Since my brothers motor crapped itself on a trip to Awoonga in the 1st week of January this year, I've only managed a handful of charter trips, the most recent being a trip to Hervey Bay for a couple days out with Mark Bargenquast on Fraser Guided Fishing charters. I have to say Mark is a great bloke and myself and my mate Steve from work had a great trip, we all got on like a house on fire and had a bloody good laugh.
We went out early friday morning from Urangan harbour, first stop out past the fairway beacon had some great shows on the sounder, but we could only manage to interest one snapper around 4kgs and one school mack around 2kgs on our plastics after many drifts, so we changed to trolling around with deep diving halcos, Steve had a good hookup with a suspected big snapper but lost the fish when the hooks dropped out. So then we moved in closer to Fraser and drifted some more with our plastics, scoring the goods with some nice golden trevs. I scored 2 and Steve scored 1, we both dropped a good fish each, all goldens were returned to the water, the snapper and the mack came home with us.
Friday ended with a flathead session on the way back to the ramp. I stirred up a couple of fish but only hooked up to one 65cm bartail which was returned to the water. Saturday we made another early start with intention of heading to Rooneys, while travelling over a few marks along they way. We passed the 1st due to a few boats already hanging on the mark, then drifted a few times over the second with plastics for no hits. We switched back to the deep diving halcos from the day before and trolled around, and fairly soon I scored my 1st longtail.
Moving on to another mark and still trolling the halco crazy deeps, we trolled around for a while and were about to move on, when my lure was belted and screamed off just as the boat was kicked out of gear and we were about to reel in. This was a big fish and I slugged it out for just over half an hour, burning arms and aching back pulling it off the bottom, eventually boating my first ever cobia, and the largest fish I have ever caught.
After a few high 5's and handshakes, we keep moving, then stop over another big show of bait on a mark, so we begin to troll again. Steve comes up with a school mack just a little smaller than fridays, then we hook a few bonito each. We then have a double hookup, Steve on another bonito, and myself on the biggest golden the trip.
However, a few seconds into steves bonito fight, it came to the surface (thats how we identified it) escaping from something brown and large, which also followed it to the surface and inhaled it after a few quick turns, leaving a huge boil on the surface and screamed off after getting itself hooked up on the halco crazy deep. At first sight it was called for a shark, but a better view of it while on the surface revealed it to be a BIG cobia. Over an hour later and after several attempts at boating it, we manage to use a length of rope with a spliced eye and the bitter end fed through it to loop over the cobes tail wrist, and Mark and Steve hauled it into the boat. This is the biggest fish Steve has ever caught.
Check out the damage to the front trebles on which it was hooked...
A shot that shows the width of the council shovel head on it...
Both cobia were returned to the water and both swam off strongly after a second or two. By this time its already after lunchtime, and we still hadn't made it to Rooneys, but were more than happy to call it a day and head back. So who would like to put a figure on the cobes weights? The smaller of the two (mine) we estimated around 60+ pounds, Steves we estmated around the 90+ pound mark. Steve is no small unit, standing just over 6ft and weighing just over 100kg if that is any guide.
Both Steve and I used our own gear for the whole trip, I used my Egrell S10H and Certate 4000 Hyper-custom spooled with 30lb Nitlon and a 40lb fluoro leader. Steve used a Daiwa Saltiga Dorado M-Over 80S and Saltiga 4500 Blast with 30lb Fins (I think) and 30lb Schnieder mono leader. The quantity of fish we caught wasn't huge, but we certainly aren't complaining about the quality!
simon
The ocean is the ultimate solution - Frank Zappa
http://s428.photobucket.com/albums/qq9/slyman71/
Looks like a great charter you guys ......... good clear pics to go with the story.
It's always hard to pick weights of fish in pics cause of the angles and distance the fish is from the camera in relation to the person holding the catch.
Caught a Black King (COBIA) similar size to that big one recently and it went 26KG . That's maybe a little bigger I.d say about 30KG ....... who else would like to have a guess ?
I bet you will remember that trip for a while !
cheers JIMMY
Unreal trip. I would of been stoked with just the massive trevs
Well done mate what a great trip and a geat report!!!
I LOVE Hervey Bay!!
Wow. Absolute dream session. I'm going with 30 - 35kg for the big cobe. Awesome, awesome fish!
Cuzza
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