We planned a trip just prior to the Oct coral spawning / fin fish closure & got incredibly lucky with the weather. Fished 6 out of 8 possible days, doing an overnight-er day after arrival, then straight back out again for a 3 nighter before the forecast SE blow arrived... which sadly claimed the lives of 6 divers. We stayed 4 nights in the Agnes house we had booked for 10. Blooded some Tanacom 1000 electrics ... woohoo, no more back breaking pump & wind over 80m for us. We covered a lot of territory, as far north as the green zone above Broomfield, regularly zig-zagging out to 150m & back to reef edges. Did over 650kms both trips. Summary is we came home with a feed but had to work bloody hard for it. We found dozens of good shows but not one exploded - no hour of power or hot bite sessions. A bit here and a bit there. Bagged out on reasonable sized maori cod & mixed size red throat, & got some great pearlies though took 3 days to do it. Strangely, not a pelagic to be seen anywhere, no bait, birds, macks, tuna, dollies, wtf?? The boat is called OCD & skipper Jeff is absolutely anal about everything so was guaranteed maximum efficiency & safety., so I wont mention the 'out-of-fuel' incident ... what happens on tour ... :-) The last night out got interesting as we decided to fish late out the 80-100m areas... after dark, it was really dark, as in pitch black, no clear skies & stars like previous nights .... absolute ink, couldn't see an horizon, no idea where sky met water, thank goodness for electronics ... watching GPS map & depth readings we cruised 15kms to find quiet anchorage behind Sykes Reef where we had been on earlier trip out - all good. Watching the weather, we came back to 1770 the day before the forecast blow, cleaned up & packed next day, then left following morning ... just before Agnes was flooded in for 3 days. Overall, weatherman was spot-on. Its another world up there & sharing it with mates is a privilege. I'll let the pics tell the rest of the story ...
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