just got back from a week in each of exmouth and coral bay. was essentially a family trip with a few fishing days thrown in. most pics are from gopro footage as we were a bit light on with cameras other than the phone

headed straight out when we got to exmouth and got into some tuna schools on small slices. got  out a bit deeper and got a smallish goldband reasonably quickly, but then got sharked everywhere we went for the rest of the afternoon so headed back. the next day we went out we stayed inside the gulf but pretty quiet sgain, with nothing worth keeping.

so with things not looking goog we tried something different with some shallow trolling and ended up having some fun on little mackies, small cod, a rankin cod (in 5m) some barracuda and a few other bits and pieces. good fun but again not much for the dinner plate.

next time we went out fishing we went to tantas and decided to have our first crack at a billfish. after again getting distracted with tuna, it didn't take long to hook up to the first which went to my mums partner (on his birthday). he fought it for a long time and we eventually landed it despite his lack of fishing experience 

we the started trolling again looking for some ground to have a drop on if the weather got better and again it wasn't too long until my rod went off. was a smaller but far livelier black and was great fun to land.

yes he is upside down, and yes he jumped from in front of my brother who was trying to land him. for reference, it is 4m from where my brother is standing to the back of the boat. big jump...video is here youtu.be/orMg5H-Qhpk

so we were now a bit over an hour in to our billfishing and had landed two blacks. we also had two sick deckies as it was prettty rough, so we decided to troll back towards the reef to have some lunch and calm down a bit. then the other rod went off with a nice dollie for my brother somewhere around the 50m mark.

so that was another first as none of us had ever caught one. the weather didn't let up so we headed back early to the gulf and had a quick troll where we picked up a trout which was cooked whole that night to go with the dollie. we tried one more time out of exmouth but despite good fish shows there was nothing happening.

after that we packed up and went to coral bay. we only headed out once but it was a great day. beautiful conditions and i got to take the wife out as we had a babysitter lined up. another big thanks to my brother for keeping the sharks busy whilst i landed my spanglie

the wife getting onto something that looked and sounded far more exciting than it was...

and finally, the quality coming to the surface without getting devoured by a hungry shark. all ended up with a few reds (this being the best) and a couple of spanglies which were all of good size.

was a great trip for both a bit of fishing as well as for the family. long way to tow a big boat but worth it in the end. and the jeep didn't even break down once.

p.s. cheers to those on this forum that offered advice (i wont name them as i don't want them inundated with pm's but you know who you are).

p.p.s. also saw the usual dolphins, turtles etc but had my first ever sighting of a free jumping malin (3 different times) as well as a dugong

Image Upload: