During the week I had Townsville Marine fit a pair of GMI 10's to my Suzuki. So regardless of the weather I was heading out today! I picked Dad up form his place about 4.30am and headed off for West Point. It was a reasonable run over with about 5knots over our shoulder. Once at West Point it was quite calm in the lee of the island.
After having some reasonable success last trip out, we were keen to again work the various Gulp plastics for Fingermark again. We fished several good marks with stacks of fish and bait showing. More bait than I have ever seen on some of these marks. But it was hard to entice a bite! Dad managed a couple of small Nannygai, 2 cod and a little Mackerel. I had nothing to the boat (dropped one and missed a few smaller hits) until we moved to a mark closer in to the island in about 6m of water. Again there were good shows on the sounder and after a drift of two I was hooked up to a solid fish. It came to the surface and had me thinking Queenfish, but as it turned we both spotted a gold tail. Dad was thinking Trevalley, but I had Barra on my mind! Next jump proved me correct as a big bucked mouth came out of the water. Some solid runs on the 20lb Sustain spin gear I was using and she was soon boat side. Estimated at about 90cm she was obviously released to go about her breading duties!
The run back was a bit choppier, but I still managed to sit on just under 40km/hr all the way. The GMI 10's are invaluable. I am now able to tell exactly how much fuel I am using for the speed and revs the motor is running at. On the way across to west point I sat on about 4000rpm for 0.6lts per km. I found that in smooth water and trimmed up I can get 0.5lts per km at 3,800 rpm and about 20knots. The whole trip used just on 25lts. Not bad for a big 150 pushing a heavy glass boat in poor conditions!
