Well our Abrolhos Is live aboard charter planned since Oct 12 has finally come & gone all too quick unfortunately. Though considering we planned so far in advance we nailed it weather wise as we were advise March/April is generally a sound bet for good weather or as good as the Gero region gets. So we board Top Gun II Saturday arvo to met Aldo and his crew & then off to a local pub to meet the team over a few ales which our team decided to continue on with the theme for a while. Anyway we motored out of Gero early Sunday morning with a couple of sore head with all the excitement of the previous evening, which soon passed as we headed west in flat conditions.

Within a few hours the island were in sight and skippers call “lines down in a hour” had us all heading for our rods to gear up and conditions only got better. We had certainly heard that the Abrolhos group of islands held its fair share of baldies & pinkies, but fair suck of the sav they were everywhere. Every drop amongst the team ended in a quality fish landed, drops like this in the metro would get you excited but after the 1st day will had all the baldies & pinkies you could hope for.  Brock O pulled in the pick of the bunch of the snapper & Brendon getting a better size baldie.

Day 2 – seen us head out behind the islands and fish the 50-60mtr depths to try for the other well publicized species the Abrolhos is known for and as if on cue they made their appearance all bar one noticeable omission the Dhuey. Ol’mate Jeff Young fresh with spin stick combo bought 48hrs earlier at Oceanside, certainly put the combo through its paces and didn’t disappoint with a 75cm trout hitting the decks. Jeff wasn’t done there, boating a double header of cobia soon after with one returned & one for the esky. Brock was also leading the way with the drift baits on his light gear, which the pink snapper just loved. Brock did have his chance of out doing Jeff this day when hooked into a decent yellow tail kingie only to drop him close to the boat.

Then my brother chimed in the first decent Spangled Emperor, the condition couldn’t be scripted any better with the swell continuing to drop to a 1mtr and the wind struggling to reach 8kts. The usual suspects of baldies, pinkies and an endless supply of Chinaman Cod were brought aboard, but by the end of the day we were content with we caught kept & released. I don’t need to reiterate how good freshly caught pinky fillets are cooked on the bbq, with a squeeze of lemon you can figure the rest.

We did a little snorkelling that afternoon back when on the mooring, awesome coral to snorkel around but the crays were proving hard to pull out of the coral fortresses . Thank god we brought a couple of pots for insurance, we desperately need to find some limestone ledges for easier extraction.

Day 3 – Seen us work towards the northern group of islands and again fish the 50-60mtr marks and again we woke to good conditions. But word had spread amongst our team, that we’re into day 3 without any sign of a Dhuey landed. Though we thought the previous day Brendon dropped a good one, but he dropped a sh#t load that day & by calling it a dhuey he was clearly trying to save face. It was almost like Aldo had the ace up his sleeve for such an occasion as our first drift for the morning resulted in Brendon boating the biggest dhuey of the trip at 15-16kg. The 2nd drift for the morning resulted in no less than 7 more dhueys boated including 2 x double headers at the same, the release weight was quickly set up and a few size dhuey can count their lucky star as they got sent back down to their reefy homes. Day 3 was by far our most productive, with Spanish mack, spangled emperor, trout, mulloway, dhues, sambo all hitting the deck and esky this day amongst the usual pinkies & baldchins.

Entree

Ryan's Mulloway

Brendon’s 15kg model with Brock onto another pinky in the back ground

Small Spanish trolled up on a skirt

My PB 80cm Spango

So later that afternoon, once back another mooring in the northern group Brock O, Gaz Mero and myself jumped in and snorkelled some 150mtrs over to some fringing coral reef only to bag 1 cray and take more photos. Upon returning to the boat, Gaz notice a little bit of flat reef on the other side of boat. So he ventured 10mtrs past the boat to come across the type of ledges we’d looking for and they were loaded. So only 8 were taken for entrée that night, the rest were left as we were planning to return this mooring the next day.

You have to love live aboard charterers (thou you do pay for the privilege) as by the time we got out of the water, stepped straight into a nice hot shower & clean clothes, crack a stubbie the deckies had entrée served. Freshly caught squid the night before adjoined the crays, but got eaten too quick for anyone to care about a photo.

The team getting restless waiting for more entree

Day 4 – Skipper had mentioned that we’d reach our limit on fish and with the wind starting up from the south, it was a good day to fish the shallows and pull out the jigs & placcies. Again the baldies & pinkies were hitting everything with gusto with Gaz Mero smashing them on the 7” nuclear chicken colour & Brock O having fun with the halco jigs (which the norwest blowies adore too). We were back on the mooring in the early afternoon and popped over to grab a few more crays in the 3mtrs of water on the mooring. Being our last night and not want to lug too much gear home seemed a good excuse as any to give the sauce a good nudge that night over a few games of cards.

Jeff’s SP caught dhuey

Gaz Mero’s smug look….more crays

Ol’mate seal making his daily trip out to our mooring for his inspection.

Day 5 – forecast was for winds 20-30kts from the south, but luckily still the swell was only 1-1.5mtr so we headed south for snorkel in one of the sanctuary zones to reel off a few photo before the trek back to Gero. The water comes up from 40mtrs to 4mtrs and presented excellent conditions to take some underwater snaps, even with the most basic of cameras.

Gaz Mero lining up a nice trout

The trip home took about 3.5hrs, we finally watched a couple of DVD we took over and never watched. I can certainly recommend Aldo and his team onboard to anyone as they certainly do look after you, we’ve never eaten so well and all fish kept were looked after with the upmost of care to ensure we took some quality fillets home. The hardest part of the trip was deciding how us with wives & kids can convince our respective War Dept’s to allow us to go again next year. So thanks to the boys who came along and made it into the trip that it was, it certainly didn’t disappoint.

Cheers Boys