After last years fairly action packed Exmouth trip which was going to be pretty hard to beat it we ventured back to exy in early April 2019 for another boys trip.

This year, 7 blokes, 2 large boats, 1 tinny and 38 cartons of piss. John F pulled the whaler up for a 3rd year to keep the tradition in tact. In keeping with tradition we kept the exmouth servo in business with our regular $1,500 fuelup days (Exmouth weather everything is 30+ knots!!)

A couple of new Green horns this year, with Troy and Daryl getting the nod with one of the canal homes being our base for the 2 weeks.

Initially we had planned a 12 day trip, however there were a couple of cyclones floating round (conviently named cyclong Bodie and Cyclone John for the trip) there wa sa debate prior to our intended departure of Monday the 1st of April and moved to Saturday the 30th as it looked like the 2nd week was going to be impacted by one of the cyclones. In the end, both went a couple hundred km's north of Exmouth and only got a little rain in the last day or two. NEedless to say we ended up staying to our original depature date of the 13th, much to the wives disgust!!

Broke the trip up on the way up with a stay over just north of Geraldton at diamond cove in one of the Chalets, commonly known now as 'The Dump'. Will be the last time we stay there, as we stayed in one of the road side camp areas on the way back in the swags and had a blast (mainly due to copious amounts of Beer, Wine, Wine in empty beer bottles, Scotch being consumed)

Arrival in Exmouth around 1pm on Sunday the 31st with a gulf glass off. The decision was made to quickly unpack and run out for a few rankin for tea. Last year we found some good rankin ground which is easy to get to, with about 12-14 marks to fish.Tthis year, it still had plenty of rankin!!

Drop 1 i think on the Fury

Drop 1 on the  Whaler

I think we ended up with 8 or 9 rankin in an hour or so and headed back in for the first night. Nothing better than panko crumbed fresh rankin, and thats night 1! oh and copious amounts of beer / wine / scotch drunk to all hours of the night!

The 2nd day out was to head up to the islands and have a play around on jigs, plastics, and maybe a little bait dependant on conditions. The weather was playing ball and the trip over to the Murians was pretty quick. With a bit of bird and bait action decided to put the lures in the water on one of my Mackie spots which has always fished well. Well lets just say it took 5 minutes!!!

Scano got the nod on the first fish, and a pretty good fish first up it was!! We put the call out that it was something like 25kg+

We had our mackie and John was doing just as well, with i think 3 mackies in a few minutes

With conditions good we pushed further north and a little deeper into the 70's picking up some more rankin and a few good fish lost to sharks.

Moved in a little shallower for a bit of shallow water jigging action, and old mate Mate comes up the goods, nice trout on jig, first for the trip!

The following day we had a man down, with one "unnamed" person coming down with the sh!ts and having to sit out. The weather on tantas side wasnt looking too great but decided to give it a run in the fury to see if we could find any bills about. Well it was rough as shit and we pretty much copped every wave over the bow in the centre console for about 5 hours, but it was well worth it!! Within the first 15 minutes we were hooked up on the first bill of the trip, a nice little 25-30kg black, which matt handled with grace

We saw quite a few more fish after this, but no real solid hookups for the best part of 4 hours. Having put up with enough of the weather it was time to call it a day, packing up the gear, bringing the riggers in and old mate Matt jumps on the shotty to reel it on (whilst we were stationary) only to say "i got a bite" 5m from the back of the boat...nec minute line goes tearing off one of the tiagra's and a VERY nice sail dances across ths ocean, awesome sight. There would only be one bloke capable of hooking a sail, on a skirt, whilst the boat is stationary, 5m from the back of the boat...old mate tinny ass Matt. We were all happy as a pig in sh!t after this, made the day. I think we thought around the 30kg mark (cant remember them all)

The next few days were spent chasing prawns (uneventful with the neap tides) more jigging in shallow (rankins), another trip upto the Murians and beyond and a trip trip further north to Flat, Long, Table islands.

The closer Rankin jigging ground was going off!

The boys prawning...or more like drinking

Couple of pics leaving the marina

A couple days up around the islands, plenty of good fish!! mixing it up with shallow water stick baits, poppers, plastics etc. We had one epic day watching big mackies jump 4-6m out of the water chasing baitfish in 6m of water, and bagging out on trout in the shallows. Some fish up to the north, with the Whaler taking the honours with the bottom fish.

Nice Luna tail on Plastic in 6m of water

Den's first good trout on plastic, 8m of water

Scano's trout on jig in about 25m of water

Tevs go hard in the shallows

Solid rankin in the shallows on jig!

We spent 3 days in a row chasing bills whilst the weather was good, and had a lot of success. Total was 8 bills landed (6 blacks, 2 sails) and something like 30-35 raised between the 2 boats.

I got a sail and a black for the trip (sail being a first for me)

John and the boys got a couple bills too

Along wiht the bills there were a few bi-catch, although the YFT and wahoo were hard to find, only landing 1 YFT and 1 big wahoo lost

Quite a few reds, goldband about but nothing huge in size and took a bit of work to find, mainly in the deeper water.

These things go hard!!!

We ended up coming home 1 day early as the wind set in from the south east, and only missed 1 day during the whole trip with wind.

Brilliant trip, no injuries (there is usually one person who ends up in hospital!!), no damage to cars, trailers or boats (although Johns anchor did fall off the nose doing 30 odd knots and left a nice chip in the hull.

Everyone had a ripper of a trip, everyone caught fish and plenty of it, with mixing it up on artificals and bait, and throwing in the marlin fishing. The water water very warm up to 30 degrees in some parts, and on the last day we saw multiple sails finning about bait schools, but didnt have any gear onboard for themt hat day.

Return trip we stopped over at a road side carravan area, and polished off the last of whatever booze we had left... iwas a suprise we got through it all!!!

By the time we got to Jurien the following day, we had broken one of the green horns.

Next years plans are already underway and looking to be even bigger than this year with a couple more boats and a few more lads!!!

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