Well the weather didn’t cooperate. Every day the swell grew, wind increased and the window of fair weather shrunk. I pushed back one day and hummed and hawed about not going. Pierce dropped out because he didn’t want to be sick. The forecast wasn’t to bad, 1.2m swell and 20-25km/h wind.
I cross referenced three wind apps and they all said 20-30 km/h depending on which one I looked at. We took off and hit the boat ramp by 11:30. Boats coming in said I was snotty and to reconsider going out. I didn’t drive 5 hours to turn around and go home so we took off. I remember the old saying; “there are old captains and there are bold captains but there are no old, bold captains”.
Ocean wasn’t to bad for trolling but not so good for anchoring up to jig. We went to lady musgrave and when we got there tucked into the sheltered side and went to see if we could get ashore to look around.
I couldn’t see a way past the coral so I told Nolan we would go catch supper then head into the lagoon to see if we could get on land. We snuck out past the island to 50m of water and dropped a line. I made a point to remind Nolan it was his first drop with his new reel. He hit bottom and hooked up. A few minutes later he had a red emperor which was the plan for the trip
It just made legal and put supper in the fridge. He dropped again while I was still getting my first line down and a second later yelled for help. I put my rod in the holder and took his. Idk what he hooked but it was big. Maybe a shark but the whole fight involved the fish trying to swim straight down and usually sharks swim away from me. Anyway, Nolan got one poor photo indicating what kind of load I had on that 24kg rod.
Well those in the know can see I’m high sticking. I’ve read about it, even seen it on YouTube but never broke a rod from doing it before. I broke that one. Sounded like a .22 going off beside my head. We can call it a high sticking penalty. Then I was down to a reel and the first two guides. I told Nolan to give me the gloves and I planned on hand lining it. I got the gloves on and pulled him up about 10m before the line broke. I cranked it up and it snapped off a foot above the hook. The 50lb line was severely abraded like the fish had been rubbing against it. It wasn’t reef. So now I need to run 80-100lb leader in the future.
Anyway, Nolan wanted to get on the island so we went into the lagoon to see if it was possible.
Along the shore was all coral and I want going to pull the boat up on it. There was also a sign that we weren’t allowed to anchor so we aborted that plan and anchored up further out in the lagoon for the night.
Through the night the wind picked up. It was bad enough it was whistling and the surf breaking on the coral reef didn’t look good. I wanted to head wide for reds but suspected we needed to tuck on the inside of the island to find less swell and wind chop. Either way, we ate and took off
Not before a friend dropped by for a pilchard
We went wide and found it far to rough to anchor so we tucked inside and tried to find reefs on the leeward side of the islands that were out of the green zone. We had to get nearly to Fitzroy before we found one which was a 40 km ride. We anchored up and caught two quick then it died off
After about ten minutes without a bite I pulled the anchor and we took off for the reef we caught them on last trip. I knew it would be exposed and rough as it was 15 miles from the islands but I also didn’t plan on staying another night. The wind was still picking up and we had a good meter plus wind chop on top of a 1-1.5m swell. The reef was on the way back to land and we would have about two hours to fish before we had to run back to get across the bar before low tide. At that point my phone camera died. The whole trip it had been shaking and taking blurry pics but then it failed completely and I didn’t get anymore pics.
We got to the spot, dropped the anchor and started putting fish in the kill tank. We threw back a few undersized and a couple that were within a few cm of legal. After about two hours I told Nolan we had enough that we should start moving because we still had 60 km of wide open ocean to get across before the bar and we had to get across the bar on at least the top half of the tide.
It was disappointing to cut the trip short but in the future I’m not going unless the weather is going to cooperate and while it would of been easy trolling in those conditions it wasn’t very good sitting at anchor trying to jig. Learned a little more, reels performed well and now I can buy another jigging stick.
Anyway, what we killed
