“Get Reel”
The October 2011 coral reef fin fish closure was slotted into start on my first of 3 rostered days off, so the need for a fish over tookthe need to work extra shifts on my days off. A mate who has recently imported a 26 foot Boston Whaler that is poweredby twin 225hp Mercury Optimax outboards rang and offered me a trip fishingoutside the wide bay bar off shore from Double Island Point. The boat holds 720litres of fuel, and has two10 litre oil injection bottles. Thereare four batteries, an electric anchor winch, and a HDS10 sounder plotter combothat filled up the dash board along with the cd player, VHF radio and a spareGPS just in case.
The boat has a 3meter beam and with 4 people on board wenever touched one another’s personal space and had to almost make a phone callto talk to the guys on the other side of the boat. In the cabin was a microwave, fridge, sink,full sized toilet, two king single bunks and a ¾ double bed under the helmarea. This boat is truly a seriousoffshore fishing weapon that ate up the ocean swells and the slop and chop withease.
The day started at 0130hrs when the alarm went off and by0200hrs myself and Kev Hughes were on our way down the Bruce highway to HerveyBay where we loaded our gear into the boat and teamed up with Rony Hunt and hismate Kent Walker who is the owner of the boat we were going out on. The boat’s name is “GET REEL”. Into the Nissan patrol and south we headedthrough Maryborough and down to Rainbow beach to launch from Carol Point rampon the 7am high tide. The coffee shopand bakery just prior to launching was a welcomed pit stop as we prepared foran adventure into the unknown.
This was the first time any of us had fished outside thewide bay bar so some pre trip research was needed to ensure we had some localknowledge on the bar conditions and the VMR contact details and VHF channelsfor the safety side of things. The guyson Ausfish helped me out with some GPS marks for a range of areas and distancesoff shore from 3 mile bait grounds out to 35 mile big red marks. The excitement was electrifying as we clearedthe bar in open water, that’s not living Barry this is Living!
First stop was a wreck for some livies, so the bait jigswent over and all we could catch were 2kg trevally, not a whip tail, yakka or slimeyto be found. We had cuttlefish heads, 6inch fresh squid, and frozen yellow tail in the esky so we headed out about 8miles from the bar to the first GPS spot. A good show came up on the 10” screen of the Lowrance and after 3 driftswe had 3 small snapper on board and an undersized pearl perch that wentstraight back to his home. The sea wasabout 1.2mts with no chop just a swell coming from the east north east. Directly into this swell was the path of thechosen marks out towards the shelf.
We tried 3 marks on the way out for about an hour and a halfeach having a look around and marking a few nice shows with 2 meter bottom risescovered in arches. A couple of mossesperch were found and a pearl perch around 45cm but no big fish could be tempted. We continued heading further from the bar insearch of some big fish or a few more snapper and pearl perch would havesufficed. We ended up about 33 miles outand by mid to late afternoon the northerly wind had started to pick up around15kts producing some scattered white caps and this made the drift speedimpossible to keep our baits on the bottom. The ocean current was ragging and after an hour of trying 3 x 10 ouncesinkers on 50 lb braid still unable to reach the 60 meter bottom we elected tocall it off out wide and head back in towards the 45 meter areas that producedthe few snapper and a couple of small pearlies.
By night fall the wind and seas had reached a good 20 knotsand 1.8meter troughs with white horses on top. This continued through until 2am, making anchoring on the isolated fishshows quite a challenge and catching a cat nap for the older guys onboard a bituncomfortable. That was until theirheads hit the nice soft pillow and the full sized beds eased away their wearyfeelings of fatigue.
We had at least one person awake all the time, keeping aneye out for container ships and other boats, we had a trawler come within 100meters of us at 130am before he turned and trawled back away from usagain. We had the anchor on its way upand ended up moving a couple of miles away from him to prevent any chance of amishap.
As the morning wore on, we made our way down towards the wolfrock area in front of Rainbow beach sand cliffs and fished some marks that Igot from Smithy, but again to no avail, the wind was dropping out and by 430amwith the break of dawn the fish were still not playing the game that we werethere to play. Another 3 moves and allwe could manage were two more undersized pearl perch and a couple of smalljewies.
It had been a long night and with a total tally of 14 small fishon the ice, we had travelled over 120 miles in total trying a variety of marksthat had good shows on them, but the fish just would not bite. By 7am it was decided to head for home, whilethe bar was flat and the creek was full of water again near the top of thetide.
We did the ground hog day thing back at the bakery forcoffee and bacon and egg burgers before the 2 hr drive back to Hervey Bay andthen after the wash up another hour and a half back to Bundy.
We were just 10kms out of Rainbow when on the top of a crestwe blew a tyre on the boat trailer, and Kent had forgotten to put in the spare,so at 8am me and Hughsey were drinking cold beer and watching buses full ofbackpackers heading towards the barge at Inskip point all while we were in theback of a 26 foot boat sitting on a trailer in the middle of no where. We cleaned the fish for a grand total of 5kgof fillets then had another beer, tidied up our belongings, had another beerand then snuck in a half hour kip without the rock n rolling that we had duringthe night while waiting for the other two guys to come back from the tyrerepair shop.
We pulled up at the Caltex servo at Nikkenbar and put in 555litres of unIeaded fuel back into the boat at a cost of $810, the opitmax oil,bait, ice and vehicle fuel put the cost of the trip at $1100, that was notincluding the replacement tyre, or the $300 bait board station that was not fittedon correctly and was lost over board during one of the many moves somewhere outnear the 30 mile marks. So at around$1500 for the trip, the 5kg of fish turned out to be worth $300 a kg. But they sure did taste nice.
We arrived back in Bundy around 2pm and had another beer whilstdigesting the adventure we had just been part of. I had the choice to work an overtime shiftearning $600 but instead I chose to go fishing costing us $400 each, but hey, Iwould do it again tomorrow, as they say sometimes it is good to just “Get Reel”.
In the end after a challenging trip like this one is all doneand dusted - just remember “Your worst day fishing is still much better thanyour best day at work” and it doesn’t matter all that much that we did not fillthe eskies, but we were just thank full for the opportunity to explore a newarea to us, and fish with a few mates when we had the chance to have a shortbreak from our often busy and hectic working lives. Wonder what we will do in November when thenext reef closures are on if it involves a boat called Get Reel and a few goodmates, then our choices are endless.....
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by trymyluck
