Trip Report to Shoalwater Bay from the 13-19th April 2007:
"After our successful trip to Shoalwater Bay in 2006, we were holding high hopes of seeing lots of Big GTs in 2007, and we weren't to be disappointed. The first few days of the trip saw high winds and rough weather outside, but that did not stop us from fishing the famed rock ledge at Island Head Creek and the Clara Group of Islands only a few miles offshore.
The first morning saw instant hook-ups to a couple of massive GTs and subsequent bust offs on the nasty rock ledge. We were geared up to the hilt this year with 130lb braid and Carpenter Wild Violence rods to match. We were looking for revenge after last year's demoralizing effort of being busted off far too many times. Unfortunately we started the trip with a big bust off in Ed's dory and another in Tim's. Ed managed a 25kg GT off the rock ledge within the first 10 minutes of fishing, which certainly sparked us up. Steve Kakavas managed a repeat of last year's effort with a bust off to a 35kg+ GT in the first hour as well.
Tim headed out around the Clara Group despite the 25kn winds and was rewarded with some amazing fishing action. They spent the day around the islands, saw numerous 50kg GTs and got connected to a couple of monsters, only to be busted off after a couple of fierce short battles. They managed a couple of GTs around the 30kg mark for the morning, but counted seeing 10 GTs over 30kgs for the day around the Clara Group.
Due to the continuing windy conditions, and the fact that Shoalwater Bay itself was actually open with no army exercises for the next few days, we took the opportunity to head around into one of the many creeks in the southern end of Shoalwater Bay. This area is rarely accessed by fishermen and hardly sees any boat traffic. We were expecting the fishing to be quite amazing to say the least. Barramundi, Mangrove Jacks and Fingermarks were the main targets.
The first afternoon up the creek system proved to be a little slow, but we did finish the day with a great session on a mid creek rock bar releasing lots of fingermark and estuary cod to around 2.5kgs on trolled minnows and cast soft plastics.
The first evening up the creek was quite spectacular to say the least. To be anchored in a creek mouth in 10m of water at low tide and seeing a 68m daily rise and fall of the tide was certainly spectacular, and the few muddies we had caught in conjunction with a few beers certainly added to the relaxing evening view from the top deck of Odyssey.
The following day was spent exploring the creeks of Shoalwater Bay. This is an area that myself and many of our crew had been keen to get into for many years. The geography of this area certainly lived up to its reputation, but some unseasonably cold water seemed to keep the estuary fish very quiet. Steve managed a very nice barra from one small snag pile, and we saw many other barras, but the water was just too cold. Not much we could do about that. There was also an amazing encounter with a threadfin salmon that would have easily been 1.4m long. Swimming along the shoreline for a couple hundred metres with lures raining down on it the fish swam on oblivious until it was foul hooked, jumped and swam away.
After our little creek interlude, we decided it was time to make our way out to High Peak Island and find some more GT action. The wind was still around 20kn, but it was a very pleasant trip out there with some current assistance. High Peak was just as we remembered it, a beautiful Location with a modest anchorage in close to the reef. We spent the afternoon around the island and had some excellent action on GTs up to 30kgs. All the dories had 45 hook-ups for the afternoon, and the fishing was very good to say the least. The GTs were hungry and feeding.
The following day myself, Jason and Brandon decided to head about 14nm out to a small rock clump in the middle of nowhere. It was a bit of a gamble as the fish would either be hot or not! Fortunately, Jason's first cast was demolished by a 40kg monster and unfortunately it busted him off in the reef. Our next 4 drifts past the rock produced a string of fish between 26kg up to 35kg. Everyone on the boat caught some really nice GTs and the action was really unbelievable. We had a jig around the rock and saw some very nice
Spanish Mackerel in the 20 to 25kg class. All in all it was a spectacular day for our dory.
Tim didn't miss out either with a trip to some other submerged rocks producing around 20 GT hits for the day for his boat and 8 GTs landed between 18 to 35kgs.
The remainder of the trip was spent at High Peak Island and around the Percy Island Group. We saw so many GTs in this week that it was just amazing. I haven't the room here to tell all the stories, but Brandon Khoo managed to put a ding in our new 1" aluminium fwd deck rails when a 50kg monster GT bashed him sideways into the rail and his rib left a permanent impression on Dory 1.
There was also the afternoon while the tide was turning that Jason and Ed landed more golden
Trevally and fingermark than they care to remember on soft plastics. Just jigging small soft plastics in 12-15m of water produced big
Goldens to 8kg and many big fingermark to 4kg. There was also the late arvo tide turn when we pulled so many 5kg
Queenfish off one point on light spin gear that we just got sick of it in the end. I have never seen so many
Queenfish in my life, and they were just in plague proportions.
There really were so many incredible stories to come from this trip, but the thing that stood out the most was how pristine and untouched this entire area is. The lack of fishing pressure in the area is obvious. Likewise, the huge amount of area that still remains unfished and unexplored around the Shoalwater Bay area is incredible. Out of about 50 possible islands to explore and GT fish from we have now visited about 14 of them.
The fishing at all of these islands has been consistently excellent. The real feature of Shoalwater Bay is that it has a combination of lots of smaller GTs in the 15-25kg bracket to keep you entertained while you're looking for the big monsters. Most of the dories encountered GTs of 50kg+ every single day at Shoalwater. It is one of the hardest environments imaginable to land a big GT, but we certainly can't wait for next year to give it a go.
As of writing we have 2 weeks fully booked for 2008 at Shoalwater and the remaining week is the 14th to 20th February 2008, which is the lead up to the full moon and should provide some truly exceptional fishing. There's 12 places on this week, so for anyone interested in fishing this incredible area, please get in quickly.
Can't wait to see you out there.
Damon Olsen"
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