Tuesday, 27 August 2013
We were up early this morning. We said goodbye to Pearl and Murray on our way to the tinny, as they are heading home. We left shore around 8.45am and went north. It was very calm and the tide was low so the reef was out of the water in some spots. We drifted over some coral with bait on hooks and no sinkers, but I caught the bottom 3 times as it got too shallow, so we headed to a deeper spot. I saw 2 big fish in the water; I think one was a barracuda or longtom and the other a cobia. We then saw a shark, a bronze colour, on top of the water. He obviously didn’t like the boat as he went under when we got close to him. We also saw lots of turtles and a few good looking bombies to snorkel over, on another day.
Nath then caught a red throat emperor, so we kept him for lunch. I then hooked a Trevally. He put up a good fight and nearly pulled me in off the bow at one stage. He did circles around the boat, so I had to do circles sitting on the bow with him. He was a good size, but something in me wanted to release the fellow, so we did. I was hoping that in releasing him, the fishing gods would smile upon me and let me catch the emperor that I wanted so badly, but that didn’t happen. Maybe I should have kept the trev, I knew Al would be peeved as trevally is his favourite fish.
On our way back to camp, Nath saw a squid jump about a metre in the air and ink beside the boat. We decided that it best to do a squid drift. I hooked a cod on the squid jig, but he let go right at the side of the boat so I nearly hooked a Nathan and Hendrix. We didn’t get any squid.
When we were almost back to camp, we spotted a decent size shark cruising around. I jumped up on the bow and stuck the GoPro between my toes to steady it and we followed it around for a while. We think it to be a Tawny Nurse, but the video will show us what it was.
Back at camp we ate our 1 emperor for lunch, a late lunch and he was delicious. Afterwards the other families went to Oyster Bridge for a snorkel, but we needed Elokin to do some school work, so we stayed at camp.
Until next time…. Happy and Safe Travels.