Great Barrier Reef 2024 – Part 3 – yet another slob to end a great trip!
Great Barrier Reef 2024 – Part 3 – yet another slob to end a great trip! : In mid-October 2024 we had a two-week trip to the GBR to chase Black Marlin and hopefully get up close and personal with a few monster fish.
The first week aboard the Adventum we boated a serious one that went 1245 pounds which report and pictures you can see here;
The second week started with a bang with yet another slob of a fish on our first day of the week charter aboard the Hellraiser 2.
Here´s a link to that report and an insane video…
Here’s the report for the rest of that week which ended as it started – with a BANG!!!
After that beautiful flat calm second day the weather turned and it went from the best we had seen to the worst – but a stiff SE trade wind is the norm in that area and told by the local masters a must… the fishing really slows down when the weather goes placid.
It was slow for us so the next day we decided to run and then bait fish on the inside all the way down to number #5 ribbon reef.
It was windy and rainy, miserable weather but just after 4pm it paid off and we had three bites in the space of 40 minutes!!!
Above: Wet n Wild on the Great Barrier Reef
George on the wire with a little feisty one…
The next day we had a relatively early start and got one right of the bat on the stinger bait.
Then in the afternoon we caught another on the swim and straight after had a much better fish come on the stinger bait, wacked it with some serious intent but just swam off.
We still had one more bite on the swim, no one really saw the bite but the way the fish was behaving at the beginning and not having jumped we all thought it was a good one – Rhys even hollowed from the top, think we got big Julie here!!! I was in the chair for this one and could feel some serious weight as I came up on the drag to 50 pounds – but it was then clear that this was no Marlin but a big tiger shark.
We hardly if ever have sharks take our dead baits back, in all the years I have caught one shark on the swim bait. We do see the hammerheads come chasing the skip´s but we just put a tad more RPM and they give up. Interestingly Rhys was telling me that years ago they hardly ever had problems with sharks on the baits but nowadays becoming more frequent – yup they do learn and there´s heaps of the fuckers!
Again 2 from 3 for the day and the weather finally started to subside a little bit!
The next day, the 29th October we spent a serious amount of time looking for bait – especially scads which were scarce to say the least.
Eric with a scad which were not only strangely absent for the week but to make matters worse were being chopped left right and center by the razor gang!!!
Although a few boats hooked up next to us we never had a bite that afternoon but that´s Marlin fishing and we still had one more day to try and find another big one.
There´s some big boats roaming those waters, bottom one being the famous Ultimate lady from New Zealand
Last day!!!
Into our last day which was obviously going to be shorter as we had to run into Cooktown.
Some bait fishing and got some mac tuna and scale’s, scad fishing where we caught a few but way less than we wanted or expected and then we tried for some queenies catching a bunch of trevallies but only one beautiful size quennie which was set out on the right swim as we started Marlin fishing just before noon.
An hour into it we got a small fish messing around with it but I think to everyone´s delight it never stuck and the beautiful bait was still intact – there were high hopes for it and when everyone ‘feelings came together something special would happen.
2 hours into fishing on the first day with these boys we had caught an absolute slob, it was now 2 hours till the end of fishing when we got a bite on that beautiful bait!
No one really saw the fish clearly on the bite but seconds later this massive bill came out of the water and everyone was like – AWAWWWWWW!!!
GBR tour 2024 Part III – …yet another slob to end a great trip!
Slob!
Just could not believe our luck and somehow, she must have been hurting as within minutes she was right to our port side, head out the water shaking.
All I could hear was Carl in the chair low high pic voice saying – look at that, just look at that!
Eric was on the leader, the fish kept shaking its head but not doing much but so green obviously putting a lot of weight on it. But Eric was not letting go and the leader parted for a clean absolute magical release!!!
After the usual high fives Carl came to me and said – this is absolutely the biggest fish I have ever caught!!!
Now that’s saying a lot, he has personally caught three and been on the boat for 6 granders! The biggest he weighed with us was a 1098 lbs fish that had gotten tail wrapped and died during the last day of the Bazaruto Marlin Invitational back in 2011.
This fish is bigger, Duarte, way bigger!!!
Who was I to disagree with him!!!
Insane stuff…
We still missed one and released another that afternoon before running back to Cooktown, I got in the chair for that one to close off an absolutely insane trip!!!
At the end of it all we had released 11 out of 17 bites, slow numbers fishing but who cares, that’s not why you go there…
…but to catch three grander class fish in two weeks, one of which weighing 1245 lbs is simply unbelievable…
As Carl so nicely put it…
…and yet we write another chapter!!!
Duarte A. M. Rato
Fishbazaruto.com
Sportfishing Charters @ Vilankulos & Bazaruto Archipelago
MOZAMBIQUE
Email: dudas7mares
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Phone & WhatsApp: + 258 84 639 0466
