Well, just back from the annual trek to CB...what to say about 2022-well here goes the summary !!!

Left home 5am for the 2 day, 19 hr trek to CB on the boys only trip..absolute no dramas other than the price of fuel..ouch...forecast looking sketchy with pending 'possible'cyclone..but not worried as usually bettert than they say...

New Furuno 295 with 2KW transducers only went in 2 weeks prior...couldn't wait to test it out.

Day 1- arrive mid pm, unpack into the house, straight to pub for well earnt coldies....work on my standard plan of going both nth and sth in the first 2 days to see where the fish are at..and shallow or deep. listen to the people at the cleaning station with a keen ear for any info that can help...using some common sense and experience you can work out a lot form the cleaning station and what fish are being cleaned....good ideas in my head to help with the plan for the first few days

Day 2- weather shmick ..headed North to try the normal red ground..fishing slow, but managed 6 good reds, 6 x XL spangos and a few others to make up the bag- good start..

Day 3- weather good form 10am onwards.... head South..fishing slowish in the 70-80m marks, head out to the 100's and it picks up..good bag of reds/goldband and usual suspects of robbos/spangos/rankins etc

Day 4 and 5- wet, wet, wet.......rum, rum, rum- no more to say

day 6- weather absolute hollywood so head out to South indonesia to hit up the Rubies.....sounder looks normal- BUT can't beleive it...not a single bite...bit of sounding around and we rustle up a fish/drift on some new ground. Then heading in found some new ground in 170m..looks ok so we drop and its on..fish every drop for all 3 fishos...work through some fish to keep the better ones and off we go happy and content

Day 7- weather looks awesome for day 8/9 so have a crusiy day doing some snorkling/sightseeing for the crew that hadn't been before....cpl more crew driving 13 hrs straight to fish hard for 2 days, then drive home-they roll in 1130pm...

Day 8- full boat of fishos, i decide to hit up my fav  never miss''  Goldband spots 55 kms sth...lets just say after hitting 4 of my 'never miss' spots...we had doughnuts on board and 5 pretty downhearted fishos....hit spot 5 and we see some fish and the right colours too-plus some unexpected reds from 120m...not a great day as we head in i thought, then decided to hit some old shallow spots i haven't been to for years and we rustled up some nice fish to end up with an ok day

Day 9- head back Nth to try and get some better fish for the boys who travelled up. Fish where on the chew early and a cpl of trophy reds boated along with a great bag of reds, robbos, spangos, trout etc...ended up a great day for all

Day 10 and 11- lazy days cleaning the boat/gear and  pub lunches...noice !!!

Day 12 and 13- pretty much the same for the last 2 days of fishing...headed out to fish the 150-200m marks for a mixed bag and the fish where super hungry..nice mix of top quality fish and done nice and early both days...i like that !!!

Day 14- pub lunch, tidy and pack up...ready for the 2 day return home.

To address some questions that  I know will come, here goes....Sharks...i touched on this in last years summary...if people are fishing marks they have been given, strong chance its been fished a bit..once again we caught a lot of our fish on newly found ground. a lot of the time we seemed to get fish on the 1st drop on new country, then nothing.. i took this on board so for the last 4-5 days fishing we only did one drop on any mark and it proved true...hence we where not wasting time needlessly...this would be my best year for sharks in the last 4-5 years...maybe only losing 1-2 fish/day....my advice is the same as last year- if u get sharked-  MOVE, don't have 'just 1 more drop'....still the same story at the cleaning station of people whinging about getting sharked on the same spot as yesterday etc...tut tut..

Highlights-

Reds where really good sized with a few trophy sized ones...as normal the best red [ has to be 8kg plus]  of the trip makes the angler 'the King'  for the trip  and until he is dismantled he doesnt need to get his wallet out at the pub untill he is knocked off....this wasn't good for me and the other crew when The King was knighted on day 2..then on day 9 I dethroned him - then late on day 9 he decided to trump me again !!!!! just  to make sure he didn't need to pay a cent....what an arsehole !!! [ just jealous ] 

More Good coronation trout than i have ever seen before

Spanish Mack on a bottom meat jig half way up on light gear...entertaining

Red Emp wings for tea pretty much every night..yummo

New Furuno 295 was AWESOME....picking up fish shows in 170 m at 45km's / hr..i like that !!!  Can't say enough thanks to 'person A'  for basically setting it up. 30 years of experince i couldn't possibly emulate..which was handy as it was like i had been tweaking it for 30 trips on day 1 !!!

Lowlight- boat getting drained of 200 l of fuel on the very wet night..at $2.50/l it hurts..ouch

I hate to say but Covid still lurks there with staff issues etc..The bakery/pubs etc still just aren't like they used to- probably i need to move forward as they are not likely to get back to those hights for  years...

3 x rods had to got to the graveyard...not ideal, but accidents happen.

Overall this was one of the best trips as weather was great, compnay even better, the fishing was challenging but with experience and knowledge we still got top qualitity fillets for days...

Still love the Bay and can't wait till next year..already counting down

Hope you all can get amongst it and live life to the fullest- FISH ON !!!!!!!

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