The weather forecast was OK for the whole weekend so Faulksy and I decided to spend the weekend having another crack at the billies.

We headed out on Saturday morning to see if there were any billfish still hanging around. Weather conditions were ok in the morning and i had
work commitments late in the day so an early start was called for ie 4am!


We headed straight out wide with the intention of catching the bait out there...Little did we know the fish had another idea in mind.

Popping the bait jig over the side, it kept getting smashed by bait which was ok until the bait was smashed by bigger things before you could get it off the bottom very frustrating when you are trying to catch bait for the billies and keep getting smashed however proved fun anyway. We only managed to get 3 bait fish into the boat and they all got smashed by tuna once they were sent out to catch the billies.





At one point i dropped the bait jig over to try and get some more bait when it got smashed by something bigger. A short while later i was still on and Pete said to me you are never going to get that fish up. Game on! the fish was hokoed on the bait jig on a very light outfit so i knew i had to take my time and 20 minutes later a nice cobia graced the side of the boat Was an awesome fight and my first cobia but the hooks gave out just as we were trying to get it in the boat for a pic! Ah well! Was fun nevertheless

This put us onto the fact there were cobia around so we forgot the billies for a while and threw some jigs out to have some fun with the cobia.





At one point during the cobia fun, pete gave me his new outfit so i could see "just how fantastic it was" only to have a spinner shark grab the jig and take off at a rate of knots! It was a short battle before i got sharked, but i did get to see how smooth the drag on it is and just how great the new combo he's been raving about is!


We headed back to the ramp having had a fun day!

On Sunday, we decided to give the billfishing a miss and fish a reef area with shallow lures to see what we could find. This produced a range of different fish all small and we got smoked on the reef by the biggest thing we hooked.










This fish saw a shark get the better of it on the way back to the boat


And this guy was a very amitious little fellow!


We did manage to get a feed of squid for tea though which was delicious!


All in all was a fun weekend with some firsts for the both of us and some beautiful scenery to top it off

Good stuff MCWB..... looks like the winds was not around again too. Love the pic's..

Oh when you want one of them combo's give us a ring....LOL

Hey MCWB, make sure you keep everything you catch! I don't want anything going back for the west australians!

Great report and Pics MCWB..

Those coral cod are an awesome little fish.

Great photos

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Thats a mad report and the pics look like they do the place great justice MCWB just a quick quiz , How do you get your pics so large on the post , and what resolution ??
for the post

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Those photos are very crisp, great stuff. Gald you are having fun over there.

Great post MCWB!

cheers

Sy

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Awesome stuff MCWB!

Dampier is a beautiful place.

That will be enough of that talk Paul.

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Thanks for the replies all.

Bushie you're a crack up Sorry to disappoint, but only the squid were kept that day everything else went back

Uncldug - not sure how the pics come up so big! It's a little bit confronting when it comes onto the screen at 100%! We're using a digital SLR canon eos 1000d to take the snaps so as a general rule the pics are all greater than 3mb. I just upload them at this size (no compression) straight into photobucket, then just copy the img link into the post at the places i want them to appear. Not sure what resolution this makes it, just think it has something to do with the file size when uploaded to photobucket.

awsome report mate, I herd that there was a bait ball out there but work ment i couldn't get out. were any of the other boats hooking up to billies? Its very strange to have them still around this late. We managed a sail last weekend, much to my surprise. sounds like you had a great weekend. well done

Another awesome post, sure looks like you guys are getting it sussed overe there.
Cheers Muntzy.

Hi MeterClub Wannabe,

Great report, with some great pics!
It will make all the Darwin fisho want to go and live there.

And these Cobia look great!
I am not sure that I would have put them back in the water...
But maybe it is just because I am yet to eat one.

Have a good day,
Pecheur