Wow, what a great few days of weather! We put the boat in Friday night after work with the plan to spend the night on the Weedbeds. I wanted to fish there first thing until the tide slowed, and then head out the back of Sally to look for a Spanish Mackerel.
We launched the boat at about 7pm after getting KFC for dinner on the way. But we were delayed from getting away when Tania took a tumble into the water while stepping onto the boat! It really highlighted for us just how poor the facilities here in Townsville are. There was a boat already at the pontoon, so I simply nosed the boat in. We do this all the time, and Tania steps onto the nose of the boat and I back off. But rails were wet from the cold and bacame slippery. Luckily, there was a couple of guys on the pontoon who lifted her back up. Rater shaken, she only ended up with a couple of major bruises. One under her arm where she caught the boat on the way down, and a couple from being pulled back onto the pontoon. A BIG thankyou must go to the guys who helped out! But we can't help but think of how bad it could have been. Not only is it dusgusting that we only have one pontoon, to service 8 lanes of boat ramp. But the pontoon is NOT lit and has NO ladder or life ring attached! Anyway, after getting dry and assessing the situation it was decided that we would continue.
Next morning we got the burley going at about 6am, and the fish started about 6.30. We managed 7 Doggis in about an hour. But we missed many more. They were doing that typical doggie mackerel thing where they hit the bait hard and manage to avoid the hooks. The tide slowed by 8am and it went quited all of a sudden. So we packed up and headed out to the cape.
We launched the boat at about 7pm after getting KFC for dinner on the way. But we were delayed from getting away when Tania took a tumble into the water while stepping onto the boat! It really highlighted for us just how poor the facilities here in Townsville are. There was a boat already at the pontoon, so I simply nosed the boat in. We do this all the time, and Tania steps onto the nose of the boat and I back off. But rails were wet from the cold and bacame slippery. Luckily, there was a couple of guys on the pontoon who lifted her back up. Rater shaken, she only ended up with a couple of major bruises. One under her arm where she caught the boat on the way down, and a couple from being pulled back onto the pontoon. A BIG thankyou must go to the guys who helped out! But we can't help but think of how bad it could have been. Not only is it dusgusting that we only have one pontoon, to service 8 lanes of boat ramp. But the pontoon is NOT lit and has NO ladder or life ring attached! Anyway, after getting dry and assessing the situation it was decided that we would continue.
Next morning we got the burley going at about 6am, and the fish started about 6.30. We managed 7 Doggis in about an hour. But we missed many more. They were doing that typical doggie mackerel thing where they hit the bait hard and manage to avoid the hooks. The tide slowed by 8am and it went quited all of a sudden. So we packed up and headed out to the cape.
We headed for a spot Dion gave me about 10nm out. On the way we spotted a pod of Whales breaching on the horizon. Once I pointed these out to Tania it was obvious the fishing had to wait. The Whales were amazing to watch, and I think they were very interested in us. We stopped well clear, but they came over to investige us. I tried numerous times to move the boat well away from the pod, but it didn't seem to matter where I positioned the boat, they would turn and come straight to us. Made for some very tense moments. I even have some shots of the sounder showing 2 passing directly under the boat! Oh, and I have a 'once in a lifetime' shot of a pair in the side image of the sounder. You can see the tail and everything. I will share this one day! After one too many nervous moments we decided to leave them be. But even when we did the 2km run to our fishing spot, you could see the pod following the bubble trail of the boat. In the end they made it back to within 500m of where we were!
I couldn't see and bait or structure around Dion's mark, so we dropped out some lines and went for a troll. We trolled for a couple of hours searching for new ground. I managed 1 small Spanish Mackerel. I didn't measure him, but I think he was just under size. For all the distance we covered I only found one small patch of shoal that looked interesting. In the end we were just over 15nm from the Cape. I wanted to be back fishing the weedbeds by 3pm. So at about 2 we pulled the lines and ran back.
Back on the weedbeds we managed another 4 mackerel and several Trevalley. But only kept the one mack as the others looked like juvenile Spanish? Check the pic, I'm pretty sure its a Spanish Mackerel?
Home and out of the water by about 6.30pm. What a 24hrs! Can't do that every weekend!!
