Well, what a day it turned out to be yesterday, best conditions I've seen in some time (mind you it looks pretty superb out there again today)  Heaps of coral spawn out there yesterday and strange tides which made the bottom fishing very tiring, all my usual favourite spots around the rons were shut down.  I had to do the solo and after being frustrated for the first few hours of not finding anything substantial, my day was made when around 100 'short finned pilot whales' (please correct me as I'm not really sure what they were) decided to play under the boat and ride the bow wave. 

The sonar singing was amazing to listen to and when one of them launched a couple of meters out of the air with a 5kg + mahi in his mouth (like a dog with a bone) it was a sight to be seen.  He then brought it over under the boat and let the little ones hunt it down again, was a sight I'll never forget. (I have it on my phone camera but the footage doesn't really show it well, you can still make out what is going on - will edit it up later) 

Anyway, headed wide behind Peak only to find more crazy tides/current (surface water moving one way, tide on the bottom moving another) which had the fish completely shut down.  Deciding it was time to do something else I chucked out some lures and looked for ground around the back of the island.  Around 70m I had a solid hit on the lumo which stayed connected (even after not snapping out of the outrigger clip for 30 seconds), the water visibility was so clear you could see the lumo and the marlin about 60m out a few meters down. 

After a quick tussle and some awesome jumps at the back of the boat in glassy glass conditions I had him boatside for the release.  Unfortunately my good camera battery had died after the 'whale/dolphin' photos so had to capture it on the phone, which I'm spewing about as the marlin pics would have been sensational.  After setting the spread again it took about 5 minutes for the next billie to come up and smash the lumo three times before not staying connected. 

Doing a loop in the area it took another 2 minutes before the third billie came up, a solid 50+kg and was so fired up he had half of his body out of the water angrily looking to smash the lumo, was one of the best takes I've seen in a long time.  Unfortunately the clip in the rigger got stuck again and when I managed to free it the slack from the drop back was just as he was about to jump, spppewing, but still pretty stoked.

I tried back in the shallows again to no avail, everything extremely quiet on the bottom - tried trolling the ledge for an hour on the way in - no love, but all in all had a phat day in some sensational conditions (even though it was pretty bloody warm)

Cheers,

Adam

(Will add some video to the thread later)

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