What can I say.... simply superb weather, great company and for once in my life the fish gods co-operated on more days than not.

The trip up started Thursday morning at 5-30am and was long and tiresome, but a stop over at Coral Bay overnight allowed me to catch up with Bernie Vale on the Mahi Mahi II the next day. Bernie has been fishing these waters for years and has been the top marlin skipper in the Indian Ocean for several years running.

I hadn't seen Bernie for over 5 years, so it was great to get aboard and somehow score the joker when the cards were cut to see who was up first. I've been out on Mahi Mahi I a few times and always drawn a face card so never really got a shot at a pelagic on the way out, so I thought that was a great omen for the rest of the trip, being first up, no matter what grabbed a lure.

Unfortunately nobody told the fish, and whilst my pulse rate quickened a little when a big Wahoo nosed one of the lures, he didn't hook up and I was left fishless.

We stopped for a bottom bounce in deep water and all manner of things came over the side. I caught my first "Robbo" (Robinson's Sea Perch) which I am led to believe are extremely good on the chew. We boated a heap of spangled emporer and Red Emporer, plus a few other odds and sods. Bernie certainly knows where the fish are and I would recommend his charter to anybody visiting Coral Bay.

We saddled up and drove to Exmouth on the Saturday morning and picked the hire boat up around 10-00am and were on the water by lunch time. We headed to the passage between Northwest Cape and South Murion. There we found heaps of Gold Spot Trevally, smallish Spangled Emporer, a nice Rankin, a couple of spaniards, a small yellowfin tuna and a plethora of sweetlip. It was great to get in amongst some line burners and I guess the highlight and lowlight of the day was the number of big sharks that took to the air and performed corkscrew manouvers mid air as they tried to shake the hook. Unfortunately it all happened too fast for the cameraman (me) and we missed getting any of them on film.

The next day we headed out to a great Red spot in about 70m on the west side of South Murion. We bagged out in quick time with a combination of reds, big Spangled Emporer and quite a few Crimson or Scarlet Perch. This was the dilema we had, because as soon as we ikijimi'ed the scarlet perch they very quickly resembled the red emporer. We ended up counting and recounting the kill tank and esky to ensure we only had two reds each. The fisheries id book was good, as it pointed to the groove that all reds have in their gill plates that can easily differentiate them from the scarlet and crimson perch.

Day three and Scotty and I headed out on Peter Maier's (Box Head) boat "Indizara" as special guests and teamed up with Wayne from Taylor Marine in Geraldton to hit the billfish. Box head is a mate of a mate and knows Bernie pretty well too. At one stage Bernie was going to see if he could swing a day off and come and join us for the day, but as it turned out he couldn't get away. Anyway we headed out and trolled a range of lures that Boxy makes himself (awesone marlin lures), within about 45mins we had a big marlin nosing the lure on the port outrigger, Boxy saw it the same time as I did and raced down from the tower as I grabbed the rod bucket and harness. (My first ever marlin, this was going to be sweet). As Boxy took the rod out of the holder the outrigger disengaged and the fish shot off about 60m with the rachet of the big reel screeming under load. Just as he nestled the rod in my rod bucket the fish dropped the lure. I wound in as fast as I could and we saw the marlin peel off and come around again. Wham he was on again and proceeded to peel another 50m of line off the rod "I'm on! I'm on!" was the cry, but seconds later the fish dropped the lure again and was never to be seen again.

This was well out of season yet Boxy still managed to raise a marlin for me as promised. What this guy doesn't know about fishing Exmouth isn't worth knowing. 40 plus years on the water there and countless victories in Gamex and the like sees this guy at the top of the tree if you ever want to get a marlin out there. Look him up during the marlin season and you won't be dissappointed.

Whilst we didn't tag a marlin we spent a few hours bottom bashing and managed some quality fish, including a really nice coronation trout for Wayne and a horse of a red for boxy. Scotty and I were kept busy with monster Spanglies and other assorted reef dwellers. All in all a great day on the water.

Day 4 saw me take the boys out to a secret spot near Peak island. A fair hike at 35nm from the ramp, but we had perfect conditions and a boat full of eager anglers.

As I pulled off the plane and cruised to the spot, you could see twenty or thirty big shapes cruising around a couple of metres under the surface. A quick drop saw three of us hook up to big trevs, Rory and I boated one each and on the next drop Adam picked one up while the other 4 of us got busted up big time.

The current was strong all week which made anchoring up very difficult so we resorted to long drifts and these were often skewed by wind and current variations. That meant that we covered new ground virtually every drift and I managed to locate a few hot spots, packed with fish. After getting tired out by the big trevs we moved a bit east and found a patch of massive spangled emporer, my best red for the trip and some huge Rankin Cod. Our floaters were constantly getting nailed by small mackies and it was absolute mayhem for most of the day.

I tried a few lures on light gear when the mackies were around but had nowhere near the same success as the floated mulie action.

We rarely trolled but I found my best success came from a light blue giant trembler fished short under the propwash. Adam also had some success with a red and white laserpro.

Day 5 saw us with a late start because of the soccer the night before but we headed around North West Cape over to some ground west of the lighthouse. There we encounted hundreds of size sweetlip, but decided to let them all go and looked around for better ground. We headed out wide and I made the mistake of dropping down in 103m of water when the current was running a hundred miles per hour. Three hundred and sixty winds of the handle and I was just about up again....time to move to some shallow ground. The wind picked up a bit and we headed back to our red spot, we caught a few tuna and a couple of bottom dwellers before we decided to head back in to soe sheltered goround. Here we found a big chinaman for scotty, a heap of unstoppables, some good spanglies and the usual trevs.

Day 6 was a day of rest as we tidied the house up, cleaned the boat and recouperated a bit from a night on the squirt. The only downers on the trip were the fact that someone stole the anchor of the hireboat whilst it was in the driveway (even exmouth has its fair share of w@nk3rs), oh and the stench that came out of 5 blokes arses on the 13 hour road trip back to Perth.

As Moly Meldrum said, "do yourself a favour" and get yourself up there, its as good as everyone makes out. I now need several weeks of spa treatment to get all the aching muscles back to normal again. I did manage some footage, I will leave it to you guys to decide wether it is worth of posting up. Unfortunately all the really big fish were pulled up while we had triple hook ups and nobody willing to drop their rods to grab the camera. (Next year I need a permanent cameraman to get the action, either that or we rotate the job 30 minutes a piece) As skipper I might just secretly put us over some sandy bottom for my 30 minute stint, so I don;t miss out on too many fish (Hehehehe).

im doing myself a favour on the 23rd of july :D

Just to clear up my muddled brain a little, we didn't hit the water on the boat that first day in Exmouth, instead we fished from shore up at North West Cape (for anyone waiting in the wings to suggest there is a sancuary zone up there, yes we were well outside it)Didn't get any real bites on a couple of hundred casts with a range of poppers, toby lures, soft plastics you name it I tried it, plenty of small fish busting up the surface but nothing co-operating.

I thought I had missed a day in amongst all that....I must have erased that first unproductive session from my mind.

Loved the report Andy. I've read it a couple of times now and is getting me fully amped up about what could be.

Sounds like you had a ball, I can only hope ours will be as good. :)

Heading over in July with Jack and co for his 30th and looking forward to heading back out to the Murions for a play again. Theres a ledge out to the west of there that drops from around 60 and down to something hideous like 400 over a km or so.... wondering if you were anywhere near it Andy?? No doubt it's known by the locals for sure.

I think that was where Boxy took us for a Marlin fish.

Might have to get on the chart plotter and see if I can't find this dropoff, certainly sounds promising.

Isn`t that what the locals refer to as ``The Steps `` generally known as a billfish hotspot because of the upwelling.

Yep the "Steps" rings a bell. I was speaking to another mate who fished up there regularly and he mentioned the same spot. That must be where we saw a couple of sailfish free jumping.

The "Steps" are one of the Southern Canyons.....big blue marlin grounds in particular!

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