Day 1 – Sunday 17th: A few of us decided to try our luck at Bundegi  after lunch. There were heaps of small Red Throats, Spanish Flags and other small SP “nibblers” to keep us entertained. Mattyoga  caught a nice sized cod and Yakyaker had some follows from good sized Trevors  over the reef later in the afternoon. All up it was a good shakedown session on the water.

Day 2: We hit a spot south of town for a crack at some bigger fish, but the gap through the breakers was not passable, with waves breaking right across ruling out any attempt to fish the back of the reef. The tide was huge too, coming right up past the camping area. As I was heading out I was visited by a school of Cobia, with a couple being in the 15 kilo range, but they didn’t hang around unfortunately. That was the high point of the day for me, as I caught bugger all and donated some lures to the reef. This location certainly looked fishy though, as proved to be the case later in the week!

On the way back to camp, I stopped in at Turquoise Bay and managed one reasonable pic of a Cod sitting on the bottom. I also saw some good sized Chinaman Fish swimming with some trevally, so it was a good snorkelling session.

Day 3: The day dawned a ripper, with light winds and a dropping swell. We tried a different spot  closer to camp and had some success both offshore and inshore.  This is where poor old Fozzy’s not so excellent Adventure almost met a watery grave. We were just heading out when we heard a yell – “I’m sinking”, upon which I looked around and was incredulous to see Fozzy’s bow pointing up at the sky, the stern submerged and him bailing out into the water. I caught a Red Bass plus a couple of Red Throat Snapper offshore. Mattyoga was the hero of the day, as he trolled up a sizeable Spaniard of 17 kilos plus. Yakyakker also scored with a big Trevor he estimated at around 20 kilos and Shufoy caught a good Coronation Trout plus a small Red Emperor.

Some of us headed inshore to some reef and had a ball casting poppers at the back of the reef. Here we got blown away by some horse GT’s that could not be stopped. Yakyakker and Brendon did manage to extract some “smaller” specimens though. You could hear Brendon from a mile away when he caught his – he was a happy chappy!

Day 4: The weather was again close to perfect and we hit the same spot again, with Shufoy, Carms and me heading out wide hoping to troll up some mackies and going over some good lumps found the day before. Unfortunately the mackies weren’t on the chew and the bigger bottom dwellers weren’t too hungry. I caught a succession of small cod plus some Red Throats and lost a good fish that spat my SP unfortunately. The guys who stayed inshore also had limited success too. We blamed this on the moon phase and the tides.

Day 5: As the swell was still very low, we decided to try the spot we went to on day 2 and this time we got out behind the reef with no dramas, although the wind was a bit stiff and the sea a bit choppy. We headed south trolling for a while with no hits. Shufoy caught a fish of some sort casting a lure, so I thought I would try chucking a small Twisty. As it was on the drop something grabbed it and proceeded to strip line from my little Shimano Slade at a very fast rate. Whatever it was ran quite high in the water initially then dropped deeper in the water after a while, but unfortunately I wasn’t using wire and the inevitable bite off occurred. At this point Brendon, Alec and I noticed a fairly substantial drop off from around 20 to 30 metres in the space of around 10 metres, so we started dropping down jigs to see what might be lurking below. This is where we experienced the best fishing of the week, with Brendon and Alec landing good sized Rankin Cod and yours truly landing a nice Coronation Trout. We also hooked some absolute monster fish that could not be prised off the bottom and ended up reefing us. I was reeling in my Octa Jig and it got smashed on the retrieve and promptly dragged straight back to the bottom by something evil. I put as much hurt on the fish as I could, but my $45 cheapy glass rod just wasn’t up to the task and eventually my leader frayed through on the reef.

After a while we started heading back to the gap in the reef and I thought I would try trolling my trusty Green / Gold  Rapala CD18 Magnum for a Mackie. As I approached the others who had already gone some way further ahead, I felt a hit on the lure and hooked up solid. The fish didn’t take much of a run at all and slugged it out near the surface mainly. After 5 minutes I had colour on the fish and it was a Spaniard of around 8 – 9 kilos. I have been dreaming for quite some time how I would handle a bigger / toothy fish if I managed to catch one and now the dream had come true! After a good gaff shot, I grabbed my club and gave the Mackie a couple of good clouts on the noggin which pacified it well and truly. I managed to slide it in along the right foot well and let out a triumphant yell and punched the air in my exuberance. This was the icing on the cake on what was my best day’s yak fishing ever, despite the big ones getting away.

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