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09/06/2009 More remote exploration
I was recently joined by John Auer, another fishing mate from Sydney. The Englishman that he is, wore ninja gear from head to toe otherwise he would have fried in the sun and we had a brilliant time yet again fishing together and talking crap on the boat. We focussed our attention exploring the remote corners of the Eastern side of Exmouth Gulf and did two separate camping trips where we loaded the boat full of fuel, supplies and camping gear and headed off.
A new species and personal best ... golden trevally (kingfish), on the flats
Followed shortly afterwards by a very respectable queenfish. We are only fishing in about 1m of water so these things have nowhere to go except off the flat. You see them cruising, make the cast and watch as they lunge for it and hopefully eat the fly.
And then to end the day we headed a few miles out and found some longtail tuna. These things are heaps of fun and John and I had a ball chasing them around for a few hours in perfect conditions.
We thought that was a good day, but that was nothing compared to the action we experienced in the coming days. We found an island and made camp there going by the usual ritual of finding wood, setting up camp and preparing food.
With a low tide in the morning, we had to wait a few hours for the tide to come back in ...
... which provided a perfect opportunity to get your mate to wash the dishes ...
.. or pig out on pancakes on an open fire.
Then for some reason the fishing just went completely through the roof. The following day we approached a flat that I had tried before at a different tide but didn't have success at. When we got there, a few large swirls greeted us in the drop off adjacent to the flat, at first I thought they were milkfish from the tails sticking out of the water, then after getting a little closer we realised they were queenies, lots of them.
We both cast, John hooked a queenie and I connected to a nice golden. With both of us hooked up, we drifeted over a patch and when I looked down all I could see was large queenies, goldens, blue bastards, blue bone, turtles, rays and everything all together under the boat. It was like fishing in an aquarium.
We stayed on that flat all day and basically followed the fish as the tide and fish moved up to feed. I connected to a nice giant herring (skipjack) on the flats that spat the hook, plus I had a shot at 3 permit that were swimming really erratically. A truly spectacular day of action!
We also used some sinking lines around some bommies and shoals in the Gulf. It's blind fishing over structure and you never know what might be down there ..
To give you an indication of the distances we've been doing, here's a pic of the track from my GPS.
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