Hi guy's and Girls,

i just crewed for a week with my mate from newcastle on his Marlin charter boat the "Iona" 43ft O'brien out of cooktown, we had my other
mates(other deckie) dad and his friend and brother onboard for the charter, anyway we poked out of cooktown to the middle and had
the baits out for 20 mins when we tagged 1 small black @ 250lbs then another 200lber..then went quiet for the rest of the day, then for
the next 3 days we saw absolutely zip, had a few come up through the baits but no takers, everwere shut down up & down the reef, they were
tagging small ones down sth on the bank, but we went north up to number 10 for the big girl..a lovely 2 1/2knt current ripped through pushing
in the pus water..only seeing a few around the 200-400lb range, then on the friday with a spectacular bite we released one at 900lbs for my mates
dad, best part was trying to wrestle the second bait from her greedy mouth..certainly made the last 3 days fade away very quickly..cocktail hour was a
little hectic that night..

saw nothing on the sat, every thing was looking good, good water, heaps of bait etc, we trolled past a tree loaded with dolphin fish and rainbow runners
only to see a biggggg Girl come up from the depths and inhale 3 big dollies in one swoop..awesome to watch an apex predator pounce like that with little effort..but no hook-ups for the day

then on the way in sun bout an hour before we turned for home we had time to tag 2 more at 250 & 200 a piece, saw the big girl they were pleasuring
but she wasn't hungry..and passed a baby whale shark which i've never seen in the wild before..!!

i've attached a video still we got(so excuse the quality), still waiting for my photo's will post them hopefully next week..anyway had a great 7 days, plenty
of spear fishing, drinking and wrestling big girls.. it was great to be back on the water with my old team again even if it was only for a week..

Cheers Nobby..

Now thats a fish, i could use the sails at dundee for skip baits.

_________________

Yep, and he's using a handline, that bloke's a bl..dy champion

Great post, nice to have something from the big blue

_________________

she inhaled a 10kg spanish DH, so she would have no probes nailing a dundee sail... .. the bite never gets
boring to watch...

Hi there,

Your bait would have been my trophy fish...


Have a good day,
Pecheur

funny you say that Pecheur, i had a copy of an old NT Fishing mag onboard for company, and the bloke who
was part of the charter said"have a look at all these blokes smiling away with these beaut mackerels
and stuff, prob trophy fish to them and here we are feeding them to the sharks and big blacks.."

some more pics are slowly filtering in..

more to follow..cheers