I recently returned from a trip with Nick Milfords operation, East Coast Angling (ECA).
The planning and booking of this trip started almost 2 years ago when ECA started out. We wanted to fish in a place whith multiple opportunities. After chatting to Nick, and reading old reports from the area, we decided to book a trip Bligh Reef where we seemingly could expect GTs, doggies, mackerels, napoleon/maori mrasse and a heap of other critters. And it actually looked like it would be worth going there for the light tackle fishing on the flats alone! A napoleon wrasse was on the top of my list - even though it is a bycatch and therefore cannot be targeted specifically.
With me I had 7 eager guys from Denmark: Nikolaj, Jacob, Jakob, Anders, Jesper, Thomas and David - we've all been friends for a bit of time now (around 30 years for a few of us). All of us had done tropical fishing trips before except one guy.
We were going to live on a luxurious Mothership, Savannah, in a very remote area of the most northern part of The Great Barrier Reef. For most people living outside Australia, I believe the GBR is a rather mythical place - and for me as well.
Doing this with a bunch of old friends, the setup was perfect from the very beginning! Add to that three almost completely new and very well functioning boats hosted by three guides that would put us onto fish every single day: Nick, Lee and Declan.
I can't go into detail about what happened every single day on every single boat because I simply don't know. What I will do is describe a couple of hightlights for me and then let the pictures do the talking for what happened on the other boats.
GTs on PE5:
- I was fishing my new Carpenter BC75MHS with a Smith Baby Runboh on the edge of a flat when all of a sudden all hell broke loose! A good sized GT came from left to right with all of its back out of the water. Clearly it wanted to kill that Runboh by the first strike. It was an interesting fight where Lee played a big role following the fish with the boat between the bommies.
I caught a couple of GTs more on the PE5 setup - this was really good fun!
- Two incidents with boatside strikes from GT packs that had followed the lure for the last 10-20 meters of the retrieve without committing until the last moment. In both incidents, the fish were landed.
- Jakob hooking up to a GT when his popper rested behind him just before casting. He did a very good job hooking and landing this fish in chaotic circumstances!
- Hooking a MONSTER barracuda on a homemade popper. Unfortunately the GoPro wouldn't turn on for Jakob so I had to look away and while fumbeling with the camera, the cuda tangled the leader into his teeth a gone it was. That fish must have been almost 2 meters long.
- Jakobs dogtooth tuna: We were popping an inside ledge. There were some good markings on the sounder. Lee, suggested to drop a jig for them. Within the first couple of drops, Jakob was in! We were pretty sure it was a shark because the runs were not as fast as doggies normally tend to be. So everyone was cheering and yelling when this beast of a doggie surfaced! 150 cm fork length and weighed in at exactly 50 kilos! What a magnificent fish.
- GTs on homemade lures: It is always a special feeling to fool a fish to bite a piece of wood carved in the shed. A GT is even more so for some reason. I have caught much bigger specimens in Southern Oman on home made lures but I never get tired of it no matter how big they are.
- Titan triggerfish on a homemade lure. My first of this species. What a wicked looking fish!
- Seeing and setting the hook in an airborne mackerel. These fish jump like maniacs! With teeth like these, a jump into the boat could end up pretty bad. When this fish came into the boat, it went ballistick. I accidentally got one of the trebles in my pants while the fish was still hooked and it nearly sliced of my right ball before Nick could interfere...
- Maori wrasse on jig. This was a first for me. One of the fish I had dared to hope for on this trip. We were jigging for doggies on the last day of the trip and had caught the head of one. It ate the jig (FCL SL 230) on the bottom and then just sat there. I actually thought it was in the corals for a few seconds until a couple of tiny shakes in the rod tip revealed something else. We all thought it was a big grouper. I could see the fish coming slowly to the surface but before I could see what it was, Declan, our guide for the day, shouted:"And it's blue!". What a great feeling! By the way, this fish truly surprised me by its strength. After hooking up and realizing it was a fish it took some drag on a palmed spool and fully locked Stella 20000!
- Sitting on the back of the mothership after each fishing day with a cold beer hearing what the other guys had experienced that day.
- Seeing Jakobs face after landing in Cairns when he found out that he had forgotten his bag with money, credit cards and last but not least: his pass port in Lockhart River. Not good since we soon had to depart to Denmak! Big thumbs up to East Air who actually managed to make a stopover in Lockhart River with a flight going from Cape York to Cairns. The bag was delivered to Jakob in Cairns airport on the same evening!
- simply seeing and beeing in this place with a bunch of good friends was a fantastic experience and a real privilege.
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| Nicks office |
When the last fishing day had ended, we all sat on the back of the mothership and summed up the GT tally to 199. We agreed that it would have been really really nice to have reached 200 GTs. Until Tommy (The Trout) said: Did you count in the one that Jakob caught on the back of the mothership? There it was: GT number 200! :)
Other than GTs, we caught a handfull of maori wrasse, a good amount of coral trout, red bass and other reefies. I don't think we lost any doggies to reefings. But the sharks... Man they were everywhere and since they swim with the doggies, they will naturally be there when a doggie is hooked.
The food on board was really good. Sashimi was on the table on an almost daily basis, and the main courses and desserts were really good and tasteful - and what's even more important: there was enough! Filling up the carbo motor everyday is very important on a trip like this IMO. Thank you Adam!
Many many thanks to Nick, Lee and Declan for finding the fish for us - you guys did very very well.
Also a big thank you to Savannahs captain, Glanville.
The setup with a mothership on the reef prooved to be as good as we had hoped for and these guys know what they're doing and is HIGHLY recommended.
