Oct 8 2007

9 pm No 5 Ribbon Reef

Well after what can only be called a very disappointing start to the season, we finished 4 days with Jamie and the boys from Sydney with not even a fish seen!!! We had a blast swimming, jigging and catching lots of scaleys and bait.

On Sunday Peter and Lydie all the way from China joined us again under sunny skies and calm seas for the ride out from Cooktown.

We enjoyed some great bait fishing on the way our out with a dozen good scaleys, a huge barracuda, and nice GT as well.
The afternoons marlin fishing was uneventful, though we did see Capt Jim on the Reel Chase jump off a small one next to us.

The past few days we have been marking a lot of fish on the sounder off the middle of No 4 Ribbon, and have all been waiting patiently for our bite. Some of the fish marking have been BIG.

Today we had a nice lazy breakfast, went wahoo fishing for a while and lost a really big one at the back of the boat, about 70lbs for Lydie who again did a great job on the light 30lb tackle. Then went for a swim on the really pretty bombies at the bottom of No:3 Ribbon and had lunch.

Wandering out fishing at about 1pm to news of only one fish caught, a nice 600-700 lber for Iceman. I wandered up all the spots we had been marking fish for the last few days waiting for our bite.

And what BITE, here she comes sliding up behind the shotgun scaley, dorsal and tail out of the water. There seemed to be a lot of distance between the two!! She ate perfect, drop back came tight and started to pull drag from the reel at 45lbs. then she just swam casually back to the edge and headed south along the reef for a while before she realised something was not quite right with that last meal!!! And lit the afterburners for the horizon!!!!

Now the deal is Lydie catches all the small ones and Peter his big one, well being the nice guy he is, Lydie was in the chair on what we thought was a reasonable one. After about 10 minutes up she jumped way out the back and was a really nice one. Peter said if it was over a grand we would have a look at taking her. After we all saw her jump twice, I said to the boys to lay them out, as she was a definite GRANDER.

Well we hooked up at about 3pm and after a couple of really close shots, we had the big fish all but beat at 7 pm, way after dark and the big flood light was burning. She had been wrapped up for a couple of hours now and was not giving up easily, and would only react from one angle.

She was pinwheeling about 50 foot down and we had a shot at the double before she again pulled the topshot off the reel at 90lbs.

We were just expecting her to give up after the double was out of the water and really close, and Mike was reaching for the leader when she just took off, you could see the tail beats or more like flat out thumps as Lydie held on tight for what was almost a bucking bronco ride in the chair as she bolted again and this time the leader gave up.

Lydie had fought this big fish for 4.5 hours at maximum drag the tackle and she could give, had the double at the rod tip 3 times I think and had whipped this giant black into submission, but with a powerful run and a tail wrapped fish the big girl swam off into the deep to continue her life.

Everyone was happy she got away in good condition, sad we did not get to have a really good look at this big girl, but I think we were all pretty happy with the outcome!!!!.

Meanwhile the rest of the fleet fishing the same area while we were fighting our fish had a bunch of bites from BIG fish as well, including several really big ones tagged.

Nov will fire , so book those open days now as the bite has picked up in the last 2 days.

Tim, Mike and Paul.
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