Fishing offshore from Wide Bay Bar

[Almako]

Anticipation for this upcoming weekend was huge, we decided on Wednesday that the forecast had been reporting awesome weather all week so it looked promising that it was going to be stable enough to jump in the car and head up to Rainbow beach and try for a big Red emperor.

We left Brissy western suburbs at 4:45pm Friday stopped for fuel and dinner and arrived in Rainbow around 4 hours later where we had booked a cabin at the local van park. After sorting out the boat and having a few beers we finally put our heads down, but due to the excitement only 4 hours was achieved.

We met the bar at high tide 6:30am and it was near flat as we had hoped, crossing through the fisher-mans gutter we headed straight for the 11mile where we had a perfect drift pattern over the reef and managed to boat a few Tuskies. After a while of no bites we moved around working the area pretty hard still with no reward. So we head further east, and after quite some scouting around for new marks we were 70 odd kilometres out on the shelf. We managed to find a couple of Red Emperor but nothing legal, and not much was happening for us either, great shows on the sounder and could not get a bite except for pickers. So it was time to head back towards the 11 mile where we planned to anchor up have dinner, perhaps some sleep and then work the area during the night and early morning. Well just as the sun went off the horizon we decided that this would be our last chance to get in through the bar as there was to be no light from the moon later in the night even if we wanted to, so the last minute decision saw us scooting across the water at about 60kl/h to get through the bar before dark. It was dark as we came through, but it was pretty much flat and done at about 40km/h.

Back at the boat ramp we tidied up had some dinner and then drove back to Brisbane within about 3.5 hours thanks to no traffic at that time of day

All in all this was a hard days fishing but since it was pretty much our first trip to the area (last time wind stopped us going to far) we were happy to get a few more marks put into the GPS for when the fish are biting.

I gathered some stats from the 200 HP HPDI Yamaha from this trip and thought some of you maybe interested, it's pushing a CC 625 Explorer loaded with two people set up for one day and night's worth of gear.

6:38am to 6:41pm
Distance 195.6km
Total time 11hours 53min
Average speed 16.4km/h (track was never turned off even at drift)
Max speed 60.6km/h - never reached WOT
Fuel consumption 148.03 litres
Fuel consumption per km - 0.75litres
Estimated oil consumption - 3.5 litres

[Stansy]

Hey Almako, thanks for the post and info. It's a long way to go and a lot of effort to fish that country. To bad you didn't get a big red for your efforts but, you learnt a lot I expect, and just wait to your next trip. You should be happy with stats for your trip and good knowledge. I am working away and will be heading home in a little over a week for our first trip off DI. We are heading NE of bar and intending to fish all day and overnight working our way back next morning. Hope to find some reds though.
Mark

[Almako]

G'day Mark thanks for the response, and hope that your trip is more productive that ours. We aren't put off just yet and will head back up that way again. Next big trip now is the 1770 week in september.

[Sheik]

Great post Almako and pretty good results for the yammie hey? It is tough fishing out through the bar, but you'll do better next time for sure. plastics or bait?