Set off from Brisbane with Nathan, Matt, Anthony and myself for what we planned ( hoped ) to be a great fishing trip to the Bunker Group. The weather was apparently meant to be very good but we were going by the BOM colour by number charts, i.e. someone leave their daughter in charge of colouring in the wind charts with their crayons and these aren’t checked. The uncoloured areas which may have been 40 knots are now 0-5 variable. We left Brisbane in Nathan's awesome 200 Series Cruiser (best tow vehicle I've been in) towing a unusually soft riding and dry 2400 Kevlacat, well compared to my usual ride in my Stabicraft 529. We had a brilliant run from Agnes to Sykes at about 40-50km/hr even though conditions were far from perfect. Once we anchored up in the shallows behind the reef we found out that the fish weren’t biting so we decided to cook up some snags and get some much needed rest as conditions did somewhat deteriorate around midnight. I think Anthony did put a nice big squid in the esky but that was all. The boys laughed at my $12 Kmart sleeping bag which was thrown on the bare floor but I am used to sleeping on the soft checker plate of the Stabicraft's floor so it wasn’t much different. Little did I know that it was raining on me during the night but Anthony woke me up and I decided to move under cover and continue sleeping, just prior to a massive downpour.
Around 5am we woke up and stomached some ice breaks and some hot bacon and eggs. We fired up the twin 140 Suzukis and motored out to some new areas which we hadn’t fished before and had no marks for. It wasn't long before Anthony run over a nice bit of ground on the sounder and we quickly turned around and went back for a closer inspection, finding a nice show of reefies including what we thought was Red Emperor. Couple of drops into the day with Anthony already being dusted twice by some solid fish and Nathan has hooked up to a solid fish, up popped a huge Black Spot Rock Cod about 130cm in length. While retrieving his hooks we soon discovered that it also had one of Anthony’s rigs in its mouth. After getting snagged up and losing my rig, I proceeded to drop down twice and landed 2 x 10kg reds in quick succession, once of which had the bait and rig in its mouth that I lost while getting snagged! We loaded up on a few different species here including Red Throat , Goldband Snapper and massive Pearlies. After moving around a few times during the day and fishing countless good shows we ended up with 10 Red Emperor (All to myself and Anthony), 10 Red throat, 5 trout and a mix of other species including Maori Cod thanks to Mat. Mat couldn’t seem to find anything on the ocean floor other than Cod. We anchored up for the night behind Broomfield Reef and cooked up some Rump steak and salad for dinner before getting some much needed rest.
Day 2 and we awoke to awesome glassy conditions at 4am and after a quick breakfast of bacon and eggs we raced out to some northern marks to see if we could improve on our already healthy looking esky. First spot is looking awesome and I drop down another hussar fillet on a prototype fly and I am on with another 9-10kg red coming over the side. Nathan landed his first red for the trip at about 6kg and Matt continued to top up the Maori Cod and red throat quota. Anthony caught up with some very nice 9-10kg Reds falling to some ganged flys with hussar fillets. Nathan and Anthony also landed some stonka Pearlies which were very large and were quickly dispatched to the cold box. We pulled the pin at about 10am and raced back to the ramp in smooth seas sitting on about 60km/hr effortlessly in the Kevlacat. At this stage Mat was still in the corner sulking surrounded by about 1000 dummies lol.
Thanks to Nathan for the awesome ride in both the Kevlacat 2400 and the 200 Series Cruiser. It’s the best car / boat packaged I've been in ever. Thanks to Matt, Nathan and Anthony for a great trip with lots of laughs and friendly banter back and forth. I hope it's not too long until I get to go out with you guys again.
Nathan and Mat learnt lots and quickly realised that is no easy task to catch a good haul of Reds, with Anthony and myself scoring all but one of the reds which made it to the esky. Mat also learnt that Anthony was not kidding that he runs 12-14kg of drag at strike and still get dusted up by big Reds, they certainly are the brute of the reef! It was also good to get one up on Anthony knocking over a couple more Reds than him so bragging rights will be mine until next trip!
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Originally Posted by outta line
