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..
.. the bite never gets