Parents had been keen for another trip to 1770 after I took them up there for the first time about 6 months ago, they hadn't been fishing since Rainbow Comp and Mum was biting at the bit to wet a line.
Weekend weather looked like it would be fishable with Sunday being the pick of the days, however the old man for some reason had it in his head to head off on Friday arvo even though the wind had been a steady 15knots all day. Not one to argue I kept my mouth shut but knew that it wasn't going to be a smooth ride out.
Launched the boat at 5.30pm and headed out just as the sun was disappearing. Leaving the creek we were greeted with a nice 1-1.5m of slop from the East, so I headed to some close ground NNE to try to keep the ride bearable. By 7.30pm the first red was in the box thanks to the old man, a nice 8kg specimen, with mum scoring a nice grassy between 4 and 5 kg, I was still on zip when we decided to head wider for the rest of the night.
Fished until 2.30am with mum adding another red around 6kg to the esky and everyone adding a spangle or two and some other mixed reefies. Decided to get a bit of shut eye on the lee side of boult before the sunrise session.
With less than two hours of shut eye I was up and about and ready to get back into it. Started floating some unweighted baits out in around 10m of water and scored some nice red throats. Once there was some more light we upped anchor and drifted the shallows using the same technique, scoring some more nice RTE and a few trout. At 7 am I was itching to go find some reds and started heading north, the 40km journey was far from smooth with a stiff easterly gusting to about 20 knots still hanging around due to the heavy rain which we could see west of the reefs.
Arriving on the first spot the sounder showed what I was looking for and the first drift produced a red for me finally, not huge but a nice school fish around 7kg, and the old man scoring a nice Maori. Another drift and they were there but we were drifting to quick, so decided to anchor, well the anchoring gods have evaded me a lot on the last few trips and this trip was much the same, wind and a bit of current making it hard to work out what the hang would be. Eventually got close enough on the third attempt and put mum to work on catching some hussar which were in plague proportions. I halved one and sent it back down on the ever faithful Slimey Glow fly and it was fairly quite. Started to re-rig some lines which got busted in the shallows session and with 5 mins the Loomis was buckled over in the rod holder! After a solid fight a very nice red was boated, gave the new Bogars a blooding in and they were pulled down to 26lb!!
The rest of the day continued on much the same way, couple of reds on each mark among other mixed reefies before we upped and moved. I ended up with 5 reds all on flys, tested a new colour and it seemed to work very well accounting for 3 of the 5. Old man got 4 and mumsy got a new PB and boated 4 also. All but 2 of the smaller reds boated on flys.
By 5pm we had enough fish in the esky and as much as I wanted to stay for the last two reds, the weather looked like it was going to close in, heavy rain squalls all around and wind picking back up to 20 knots, so the call was made to head home.
Made it back to Hervey Bay at midnight and we were all well and truly spent! woke up Sunday to a magic day only to have to spend it cleaning fish and the boat, but couldn't really complain with the day we had previously and we all know fish won't bite when it is calmNothing better than spending time with the family and sharing the smiles of boating reds
Few Pics below of some of the fish and also a short video for your viewing pleasure.
Anthony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpEnT6sLvp4
Link to the video
Mum showing the boys how it’s done
Nice 8kg red taken by the old boy
Shark nearly had him! See the nice teeth marks near my hand??
4kg pearly
Nice trout around the 4kg mark
Baby Tiger Shark caught by the old boy
Average show on the Furuno
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Originally Posted by Spot82
