Dunk Island Day 4

The fishing Charter.

Went with Alistair Pike on his charter. It started at 8:00 am with Alistair catching live bait with a throw net. I had never seen one of these before -- an interesting contraption. After 3 throws we had a live well full of hardyheads!

The trip out was an adventure. I always thought the water was calm behind the reef. Bulldust!!! There was a 1 m swell rising to 1.5 m. The boat pounded through the swell, having a hard time in several sections. Finally we got to 40 foot rock -- a rock with a channel between it and the main island. The channel was sheltered.

We baited up and started fishing. Two rods had unweighted live baits drifted out the back. Two rods had livebaits on paternosters. And two rods had squid on paternosters. I cant remeber who got the first fish -- but I was succesful early, with a 10" marbled cod. It was covered in spikes!

In the meantime, the front of the boat got a couple of black trevally. They were colourfull and, according to Alistair, had poisonous spines. They were released back over the side. The fishing was quiet, so we moved backk down the channel to where the current enterred the channel. We anchored about 20' away from the rocks, and wer in about 30' of water.

I got a 'madfish' -- obviosly a member of the tuna family. It was a nice fish -- 2 to 3 lb in the old scale. Alistair said 'bait' and attached a big hook to this fish. He attached a baloon and let the line out the back of the boat. The madfish swam all over the place, eventually settling in the front of the channel.

In the meantime the crew at the front of tghe boat using squid started getting regular hookups on squid. They were catching batfish. Soon we all switched to squid and started pulling up batfish. And at 3 kilos for mine they were some big batfish!!!!

All of a sudden the rod with the madfish went off. Another angler (Paul I think), had not had too much luck, so he was given the task of reeling in the fish. But it was big, and it took the madfish out to the deep blue. Alistair recons it was a shark.

Eventually Holly (an older teen in the front of the boat) was getting sea sick, so we up anchored and moved to a new position -- the wreck of an old bomber from WWII. Things were quiet on the bomber. There were 3 small (50cm) sharks caught. But I had no bites!

We moved to a reef just behind the small island in front of the Dunk Isdland resort for the last 20 minutes of the charter. No luck. I got another marbled cod. I cantt remember much else being caught, though there were a couple of other fish landed. But nothing remarkable!

I asked Alistair what his advice would be for someone staying at the resort. he suggested the Jetty at first light -- an appraisal that seemed to be correct! Alistairs web site is http://www.fishaustralia.com/ . In general, I thought Alistair had a well run operation -- it was the weather that was preventing much in the way of fish!