Cairnstrip

[busted]

gday fellow raiders, back from my working holiday and thought id let you guys know how i went as i asked for a few tips before i went. was stayin at holloways beach beaut lil place 30m from the beach had no luck there however a few of the locals said you could get some barra and salmon off the beach in the morning, same goes when i walked up the barron river outlet on my days off no luck, seen quite few barra chasin some baitfish but.

was hoping to get out to the reef on the Sunday and ill tell your what the conditions were perfect blue skies 1-3knot winds and a little if not any swell. my cousin and i hit it early up at 3 drove an hour up to Port Douglas and headed out to batt reef were on the water at 4.40 a good hour and a half before sunrise. all was going well as were probably 30km out just as the sunrise and were about 10km of were we headed when the bloody impeller shit itself of the 60hp 4stoke. **** as you can imagine. let the engine cool to see if we could get it started again but every time we got over 1500revs 2.5-3knots beep beep beep the warning lights would start, couldn't even get to trawling speed.

Anyways 6hours later after limping back to Port Douglas doing 3knots we finally arrive extremely pissed off. However managed to get a 40cm spotted macky after trying to trawl on the way back even the lures were slowing us down hahaha. That was my only day off that weekend.

On our way back to Holloways we stopped at this wharf forget the suburb but right near the uni up there. after getting a few livies with the cast net chucked some out with a few balloons attached and managed to snag a 50cm black tipped reef shark, this fellow comes running over from the uni and asked if they could chuck it into there aquarium the uni just spent a couple of mill building, yeah no worries champ.

The following Friday had finished work for good and had the rest of the w.e off as i was flying home Sunday night, went round to me cousins to fix the impeller, bloody $40 part screwed us hard.

weather was hopeless sat and a little bit better on Sunday so we decided to give snapper island a go up the daintree on Sunday, we hadn't tested the boat and weren't going to risk the reef again after our previous effort.

got up early again 3am and headed up to snapper island, followed the daintree river out crossed the bar and round to snapper island in a good 1m swell. finally made it round there soaking wet threw the halco's out and hit trawling speed 4.5-5knots, thankfully we didn't have an issue with the boat. bait-fish everywhere according to the sounder and were hunting some big mackies thought we were in for a chance. no love for the first few hours of sunlight they must not of been on the bite that day.

we noticed a trawler coming round to anchor behind the island so we got up in behind it hoping some fish might be following it and eating all the scraps they were throwing overboard, got level with the trawler and zzzzzzz we were on huge first run took a got 100m of line jumped on and started winding and could only feel a dead weight with only a couple of tail beats 'shark' i said, after winding him in we saw some silver big GT the bastard had curled onto his side and was just letting me pull him in, its like pulling in a 44gallon drum. 20kg GT. He completely swallowed a 40cm wolf herring with 4 gangs through it a bloke had given us at the wharf the previous week. Released him he took a bit of time to get him going again though.

On our next pass of the trawler we got in the exact same spot and zzzzzzz on again this time the rod was going nuts pulled a good 150m of line on his first run. after a good 15-20 fight and pulling a boat a good 200m from the hookup spot i'd landed him the biggest GT id ever seen even bigger than those on all the videos 30kg F*** yeah!!

Had a great time up there and i recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Cheers BUSTED

TRYIN TO ATTACH FLICKS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE IM HOPELESS

Edited April 20, 2010 by busted

[busted]

Couple of flicks

[Krispy !]

Welldone Mate,

Thats a STONKER of a GT!!!!!!!

Cheers,

SL,

[scaffdogg]

what a monster gt mate nice

[tumra]

thanks for the report mate.. i am goign on a bucks party at holloways beach in august and will be staying right on the beach so i am going to be doing a bit of fishing. After reading your report i have realised that i should take a sturdier rod than the bream rod i was planning on taking.

[adjustedpete]

Thats one for the fishraider records. Im not sure if they get bigger than that.

[sanger]

Top gts well Done!