Coral Sea Trip Report

jimnicdusty · June 5, 2009

Part 1

Where do i start. What a trip, it was the trip of a lifetime.

It started with months of planning and many hours looking at maps of where we wanted to go, research on the types of fish we would catch, what they ate, what rigs, knots and lures we would use. We also spent hours in the shed making our own poppers and finally I settled on the below collection.

So on the saturday we arrived at the marina to load all our gear onto the Eastern Voyager which will be our home for the 10 days.

Left the marina at 3pm, cruised until 7am to reach Tiawan reef where we spent our first day chasing GT's on poppers. We jumped in one of the dory's and went and fished a reef break. Where I caught my first GT for the trip.

Then I caught another 1.

While I was hooked upto the 3rd one my brother in law stalled the boat so I had to take over the motor as we were nearly on top of the breakers. So he took over the rod and caught the biggest GT for the trip and it hurt him afterwards - gee those GT's pull hard !!

For the rest of the day we did some bait fishing, caught some coral trout, sweetlip and a few other reef fish.

That night we put out a shark bait and caught a 250 - 300 kg hammerhead. After a 45 min battle we had it boatside, all the boys were watching and cheering me on but the hopeless buggers didn't get a decent photo. I was a bit dissapointed and this is the best photo there was.

At about midnight we left Taiwan reef and cruised to Samurez reef and arrived there about 9am. This day became known as Job fish day, we caught over 50 job fish that day and a heap of other reef fish too.

See next post for part 2