Regular readers know I was lucky enough to be invited to join a syndicate buying a 7 metre plate centre cab back in May this year. Even luckier, because I don’t have to contribute financially. The boat is now stored at Urangan near Fraser Island and, last week, we headed up for the fourth trip since October last year. It’s a big whack of aluminium and makes my old Chevy Suburban look like a Yaris:
Just before we left, the game fishing world was abuzz with news of a massive blue marlin caught off the northern tip of Fraser Island. Way bigger than what we planned to target, but they can’t stop us dreamin’:
The big problem last week being one we all deal with – bad weather. We only had four days fishing planned and on the first two, the seas were shocking. We tried anyway, but it was just too brutal to fish:
With winds forecast to drop on the Wednesday, we had a couple of days to kill. There’s always something to surprise, around Hervey Bay:
Call me a prude, but I reckon this one crosses the line:
Although with 658K views and 1800 likes on the Facebook page maybe I’m the one who’s out of touch. Anyway, a primary mission on this trip was to test our new Hoshino 7000 reel. It’s the larger version of the 3000 size Lesson reel we supply with various combos. We’ve sold hundreds if not thousands of the 3000 size and they’ve been top quality and super popular. Just needed a battle with something powerful to give the new bigger reel an on water workout. 7000 on left, 3000 on right:
Finally on Wednesday the clouds cleared, and the winds dropped. First stop was the nav beacon only a couple of kilometres from the boat ramp. Zack scored this 50cm coral trout on a pink and white SP two or three casts into the session:
Then backed up with this funky moon fish a couple of casts later:
A few mackerel around - but small, and destroying the lads’ Squid Trex lures. So they swapped to knife jigs:
Up the island we went to some rough ground - which has produced for us, in the past. Zac and Matt hooked a couple of nice fish which we thought were trevally. Unfortunately both fish broke their lines. I fitted one of the new 7000 reels spooled with PE3 line to our Bay Jig rod. Tied on a 5 inch Z Man SP and started bumping it around in nine metres of water. BANG:
After ten minutes or so netted this golden trevally for a quick pic and return:
The Bay Jig rod has always been a top performer for me. It handles jigs up to 250 grams but works best with 100 – 150 gram size:
Posted up a video showing various crew members fighting fish on the Bay Jig:
It’s a winner because weight is such a crucial factor in comfortable jigging. I get blokes coming out on my boat excited to use their new Penn Authority reels or whatever, and they get tired after 4 or 5 drops in 130 metres. Which is to be expected, because the Penn reel alone weighs nearly 900 grams. Our combo? Rod is 150 grams, reel is 500 grams. With light gear you can jig all day comfortably. Price? $195 for rod, reel and braid – plus $25 delivery. To get one, click this link:
Or, send me an email if you’d like to know more? Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow