FYI, in case anyone is going up. Got back yesterday from a week in the Sandy Straits on a house boat. Brilliant time, would highly recommend it to anyone. We had 3 of them booked as a group and took a tinny up to tow behind each. Another friend took his Norcat 36 up as well.
Fishing was a little disappointing I suppose. Crabbing was no good at all. Only got about 10-12 legal sandies out of 8 pots over the 7 day's with similar results from the other 2 boats plus a few muddies.
Got a fair few bream and whiting between us. We got a couple of reasonable school jew, the odd tailor and one of the mate's boy's got a small barra of the bank in Teebar creek.
On the trip back from Garry's to Kauri creek on Thursday saw heaps of bait balls being hammered by something big, unfortunately by the time we got in the wind blew up and we couldn't get out again to check out the action. I was going to jump in the tinny and leave the mate to take it the houseboat in at one stage. Wish I had now.
Spent the Friday afternoon and night back in Teebar creek. Was fairly interesting with the wind. None of us got much sleep worrying about ending up on a sand bank, then when we get in the owner tells us that if got any stronger he was going to call us and tell us to anchor in the shallow water and spend the night high and dry anyway.
All in all a great experience spent with good friends and all the 11 kids who came along had a great time too.
Reasonably expensive during the peak period but considering what you would spend extra anywhere else it wasn't too bad. Fuel prices have crept into this area as well as the per hour cost on running the boat engines went up from 25 to 27 an hour just before we went and I believe they went up to 29 ph for the next hire after us. We averaged around 11 or 12 hours each, so factor that in when weighing up the costs.

Cheers, Brad.