With good weather forecast we headed out for an overnighter off Wide Bay Bar. Mick, Kelvin and I in Mick’s 2301 Striper and Luke and Adrian in Luke’s Cairns Custom Craft Cat. We waited for the run-in tide on the bar and went across Fisherman’s gutter. Mick took on tow bits of broken white water waves but the big Striper popped out the other side no dramas other than us getting a bit wet. We headed off for our spot having a look at a couple of marks on the way. We got there and it was glassy calm but after 20mins or so a small SEer crept up. On the way to the mark we were heading Luke found a big lump. This proved the place to be and after working out the drift line we put a few nice parrot, gold spot wrasse and hussar aboard. Mick then hooked up big. This was a nice legal red but no monster. After trying anchoring etc. we left the boys to go a bit wider. That was as wide as Luke was game to go with his unknown fuel range. At our next spot we cleaned up on hussar bagging out along with some nice parrot, a coronation trout and some red throats. We anchored here for the night and when the anchor got jammed it made it a no-brainer. Next morning we got he anchor up and headed to my red throat spot. Sure enough Kelvin was still on fire a nabbed our first red throat. Mick suffered some big bust-offs on his gear along with me on the soft plastics. Probably big AJs on the mide water ones and sharks or getting fish sharked on the others. Earlier in the week Kelvin picked up a flathead daily prize fishing out of Luke’s boat winning a BBQ. We worked our way back down to Luke then headed back in across the bar which was a non event in the great conditions. With lots of fish to clean we called it a day. We had 54 fish aboard and between the two boats we had over 80 fish to clean.
Mick’s Red.
Our haul.
Luke’s boat.
