NQ epic adventure...with pics :)

[cotton_reel]

So me and me 3 buddies headed out early one fine morning to a place somewhere in the far north queensland great barrier reef... id rather not say exactly where as i beleive the reason why it is so good, is because not many people go there

anyways we arrived at our destination around 8am and decided to troll some garfish and try for some mackrel... well after 5 mins, we didnt get our mackrel but instead a 5kg coral cod! i guess we were a little close to the reef... sorry no pics cos we werent very excited at this stage...

so back up to 6 knots and out with the riggers, another 10 mins goes by and BANG, reel starts screaming! so we all grabbed the other 3 rods and madly began winding in the other baits whilst the fish kept taking line and BANG another reel starts screamin, mine this time! so now we have 2 big fish on and finally get the other 2 rods out of the way. I took my fish (or he took me) to the front of the boat whilst christo kept his out the back. chris was the first to get his in and landed this 30kg Spaniard...

[cotton_reel]

so i kept on fighting for a while and realised it was the new TLD25`s maiden fish... when the fish finally got close to the boat we could see it was a big ass macky better than the first and managed to land this beauty...all 40kg`s of him!

[cotton_reel]

so now we had 2 and the boat was 70kgs lower in the water... we couldnt fit them in the ice box whole so after we snapped these pics we got busy fillettin... now we were excited, pumped actually and the trip had only just begun...

[cotton_reel]

so now were thinking, stuff this we have too much pelagic and no trout so we pulled up behind the reef and had a fish for some trout. me and robbo decided to choose the ones we wanted so we hopped in the water with our spearguns... it didnt take long to bag a nice trout each and after we swam back to the boat were delighted to discover eric and chris had cought a couple trout off the boat whilst we were gone... so now we had 4 trout after dropping anchor no more than 20 mins ago... this went on and on for a while until we had about 10 or so coral trout and decided we wouldnt take anymore unless they were bigger than the ones we had... there were a few more legal trout that had a very lucky day that day...

we had enough after lunch and decided to troll our way back toward our camping spot for the night and of course got smashed by another spaniard only this time we (or he) werent so lucky... damn sharks came up and cut him in half about 3m from the back of the boat...

[cotton_reel]

and so we upped the gas and headed to a peaceful spot for the night... hows that weather ay? Day 1 concluded with copious quantities of extra dry, crownies and jack daniels, camped on a small island beach in the dead still night... ill continue at a later date coz the weather is on again and im goin fishin again!

[marty+jojo]

awesome report. very nice spaniards. any trout photo's????
cheers marty.

[StevenM]

Hey top effort Cotton Reel

[SWANY22]

very impressive guys i thought that 30 was huge until the 40 came up what a double hook up.could not ask for better than that

[BeeCole]

Awesome -we just got back from 7 days on a 35ft cruiser in the Whitsundays - how was the weather Indeed......

Great little reel the TLD 25's.

what line and leader were you running?

[aussiefool]

What a great trip [smiley=2thumbsup.gif] Sounds like you lot made the most of the trip, hope all the rest live up to the same

[Slient]

Wow those horse sizes...
Unfortunately many people are reluctant to take this sort size home because they carry ciguatera...

[jackash]

Awesome fish. Thats just phenomenal... hope the rest of trip is jsut as good... looking forward to the reports.
Cheers
Jackash

[robyoung1]

oh.. I know that spot. that's the horse mackeral secret spot number 2 isn't it?

rob

[2fishy]

souds like a great trip, nice pics

[reel_scream]

Beautiful macks. well done.