Was out north of Moreton on Sunday with a mate trying to raise a feed.
We were drifting along gently, the wind had dropped and it was very quiet. The quiet was shattered suddenly as an explosion of air from a massive whale that surfaced about 20m behind us coming from the left. WOW awesome Huge, it slowly headed down in a kind of rolling motion. A minute later a slightly smaller whale surfaced less than 15m behind us and waved a fluke at us before diving. about then my rod gave a shake and i grabbed it and hooked...... nothing, so I fed out more line and put it back in the holder. Another whale surfaced about 5m behind us.... just lifted his head and eyeballed us before slowly diving. Then i looked as another whale appeared beside the middle of my boat it stayed a metre or so underwater untill it was clear of my boat before popping up for a breath and a bit of a roll and wave at us. I then saw the first whale (I think) turning around 30m away to the right and heading for us, diving. That was when I noticed my bottom bashing rod with pink 80lb braid going wild and peeling line. As I reached for it I saw my rod with green 50lb braid and the drifting Livie peeling line as well. I thought oh shit I've got a whale or a good school under us in 70m water. As i grabbed the bottom basher another whale bobbed up 20 to 25m behind me to the left with the pink and green braid streaming off it. It stayed a while and just sort of eyeballed me. I was wondering where the other big fella whale was going, and was a bit concerned for this whale with my two lines across it. I grabbed a knife and cut both the lines hoping the weights would pull the lines and be free of the whale without setting the hooks. The hooks should have been a long way from the whale still close to the bottom. The whale just slowly drifted down into the water and seemed to head south away from us. I saw the blows, but I don't know where the rest of the whales went. All of this took only a few minutes. I was just stunned, I could hardly talk and I was trying to absorb what happened in such a short period of time. I was hardly bothered to rig up and drop another livie down.
We are living in a fantastic part of the world, to have this happening in our own back yard.
My friend with me on the boat is from Japan and had never seen a whale before... he was very worried, but somehow i wasnt very worried, I seemed to trust them as they were totally aware of their own size and space and the space around them, and we were no threat to them.
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Originally Posted by Kdog
