Well another trip to Exmouth has been and gone, and another great trip it was.

Again we hired a house on the marina, makes life a lot easier when loading and unloading, a couple pictures of the boat at the jetty at sunset.

A Little different to the past years, this time the wives and kids joined us for a few days prior, then departed and the rest of the boys arrived. We had 2 main bucket list items for the trip, Yellow fin Tuna and Ruby's on the deep drop!

My partner and I decided to give the whale shark thing a go this year, and booked in for a day out on a charter swimming with the sharks.

Must say, well worth the money at least once in your life. Amazing majestic creatures with little to no care in the world, not even with 20 people in wetsuits getting in their way!

Whilst it was family time for the first few days, we did manage a couple days out on the water when the weather looked red hot. And the fishing was just that, red hot. We managed one solid day chasing bottom fish and another chasing pelagics.

Day one

Not a bad start to day 1, bagged 6 reds, a few rankins and Spangles!! and couldn't believe no sharks!

2nd day was a trolling day. Decided shallow water chasing tuna, mackies, anything that would take a lure really. 5 minutes into trolling we managed to get 1 of the bucket list fish!!! and a nice one at that!

Not 5 minutes later another rod went screaming! A nice solid mack

Even my missus was getting in on the action!! I think we had 2 go off at the same time.

This guy hit a lure after we had stopped whilst landing another fish and one lure still floating out the back!

We had hooked 8 or 10 fish in lass than 2 hours. hot little session. Spent the rest of the day throwing plastics, getting a few more spangles and other bits and pieces. As well as a nice cobia

The weather on the way back in

Easter Monday came pretty quick, and the rest of the boys had arrived for 8 days of fishing with just the boys.

First day out on Tuesday was a nice day out, where we managed to jump in for a spear as well as get out into the deep chasing a few more bottom fish. The ride out up around peak was average, taking over an hour and half to get out, but I had promised the boys the weather was going to be mint. we pulled up in behind peak sheltering from the SE wind for a swim and managed 2 trout on the spear, and the first fish on spear for me!

An hour later the wind had dropped right out to almost glass, so we pushed out to some ground I found the previous year. We were about 2 hours before high tide.

First drift resulted in Den's first red! not a bad way to open your account that for sure! Den was using some old Penn overhead thing that was about 100 years old. It was spooled with braid, but very very slow on the retrieve. To our amazement he barely got sharked. his combo was quickly named 'the datto'. Estimated 9kg

2nd drift the datto is on again!

This was the sounder at anchor. Mind the high gain, I was playing about at the time someone took the photo

We ended up anchoring for the high tide, with our other boat anchoring only 10 metres away. The end result was 3 reds, 3 rankins, some big cod, plenty of spango's. Biggest red went 10+kg but I don't have a picture of it yet.

We moved out deeper after the high about 3 mile or so away to another mark I had which in the past, didn't seem to be so reliant on the right tides. First drop!

Red and Gold band!!

Another Red for Scano. Think he had had a few by this time!!

By the end of the day we ended up with 26 or 28 fish between the 2 boats. 5 reds, 2 trout, a few rankin, Gold band and Spango's!

Thursday was a bit of shallow water fun again, firstly with another swim, but couldn't find any trout. There were a few very very curious sharks about which liked coming within a foot of your fins. None the less, no harm done so we kept an eye on them and kept swimming about. One of the other blokes did manage to get hold of a nice painted cray which ended up on the BBQ and tasted pretty dam good!

After a swim I pushed up further around flat island for some shallow water plastics action on some more ground I found the previous year. Now its taken me quite a few years to get the boys into plastics fishing. In the past, they struggled to get many fish, and generally only hooking Charlie cout (Plastics sitting too long on the bottom) I would end up catching the majority of fish while the boys just got pissed off. Well I think I've now convinced them plastics is the way to go!

Carl with a nice 54cm trout on 12lB on plastic!

Nick with a nice rankin on 15lb on plastic!

A Few hook ups on plastics too. Some never to be seen! got plagued by Large mackerel which seemed to love the plastics

We pushed a bit deeper again looking for fish before we went in.. I managed a nice Rankin and also a few spango's

sunset coming back into the Marina

Friday was deep drop day, with only a 3 tide day and absolute glass, was a good decision. Being the first attempt at it, I was determined to find fish. All on manual gear!

After playing with the sounder a bit, this was the first lump I found!! and didn't need to look any further!! Must say I was bloody impressed with the glarity of the Furuno in those depths! first time out there with this sounder!

this was the 2nd drop!

3rd Drop

4th Drop

We ended up with 4 ruby's all around the 4-5 kilo mark, so nothing huge but success for our first attempt!

We trolled up out around the rigs a bit chasing billies, with little success only managing a few small tuna. The other boat managed a nice Dollie about 10 kilo.

Along came Saturday, and with it the rain!!! it started raining Friday night, but simply poured down Saturday morning. The floods was a first for all of us (Except one who was from the NT) a pretty insane sight. the main drag flooded 3 times.

Trying to ride a pushy through the flood :)

Standing in the middle of the road in front of the Marina!

the floods

We did have 2 Roo's try cross the flood right in front of us, one made it, one was in trouble, so one of our mates waded out to try usher him across, to our amazement he actually grabbed the Kangaroo and lifted him across the flood to safety. The Roo didn't kick or try get away, was just grateful to be out of the water! some of the locals couldn't believe that, that just happened.

We managed to get out on the Sunday, the Gulf was filthy, this is some crap we found on the way back from the Murians

The house, water almost made it

All in all, a bloody great trip, I think we went through 35 cartons of beer in 7 days between 8 blokes.. work that one out!

Some great laughs, some great storeys, a beer or 10 with some great mates and a few fish to boot. What more could anyone want!

Bodie