A few weeks ago, I towed the boat up to Exmouth for a week.

We were ostensibly up there for a 50th birthday party, so it wasn't meant to be a 'fishing trip' per se, but that didn't stop me from getting out on the water nearly every day.

One of the guys up there was Trent (Simbad off FW), so I always had someone willing to get out and chase the fish.

The weather gods were pretty kind, and we had some pretty awesome conditions almost every day.

In summary the fishing was pretty slow, with just enough short pockets of really hot bites to keep us heading out.

We put in 2 days trolling for the beakies - picked up plenty of tuna, but on the first day we didn't raise any bills. Second day of trolling we raised 2 or 3 (still some debate about what one of them was!) and hooked one black, but it threw the hooks on a jump. Right at the end of the day long corner went off on a solid run and I could see something jumping in the distance, but couldn't make out what it was. There were a few premature marlin calls made, only to reveal this dirty barracuda that kindly trimmed my soft oscar. There were a few interesting moments trying to get a pic before the release as he had some angry teeth and was pretty unhappy about being on the boat.

As with the last time I went to Exmouth, the Makkie trolling was really slow. We put in quite a few hours, but this is the only mak that fell to a trolled minnow. An X-rap did the damage.

We headed out for some GT casting around the islands one day, but after about 10 casts I realised that the shoulder I'd injured a few weeks earlier wasn't going to let me cast anymore. Bugger. Trent carried on, and after we saw a makkie launching itself meters from the water he lobbed his popper in its direction, and was on immediately - his first fish on popper, and a christening of a new rod.

As others have mentioned, the grey coats in Exmouth at the moment are bloody rife. We found some good ground in around 160m and I dropped the jigs, but in 2 trips to that spot I couldn't land a fish. Plenty of hookups but kept getting sharked. With many jigs lost, we decided to move on. Trent did pull one pinkie off that spot which I haven't seen up in Exmouth before. One of the sharks I spent a solid 20mins wrangling to the surface under serious drag, only to have him bust me off 40m from the boat. Probably for the best but still would have liked my jig back!

Whenever we fished the bottom I fished exclusively jigs, which turned out to be a winner. The jigs fairly consistently outperformed, though I did lose a hell of a lot of them to makkie snips and sharkings.

This nice rankin fell to a lamble bait that I'd bought just before the trip (cheers Sam). Trent pulled another rankin and a tusk fish on the same drift.

This trevor smashed a fanky in shallow water, which made for an interesting tussle.

On the last day we hit the islands planning to get a bit of Mak trolling in early, and then hit the bottom again. All day the fishing was exceptionally slow - the fish were all over the sounder, but nothing was interested. The call was made to anchor up near the islands, pick up a small shark for fillets, then head back to the same marks on the change of the tide. We got the shark within 15 minutes of soaking the bait, and then went back to the spots. What a difference the tides made. As soon as we dropped there were fish all around. I dropped a few good fish on the bottom, but what really impressed me was the pelagic jigging. During an hour I jigged a few macks and quite a few cobia off the same spot. They were hitting the jigs on every drift, and thankfully I was actually landing the macks, unlike other days where I was just getting snipped. After that hour the bite died right off, so we called it quits.

Unfortunately we didn't get a whole heap of pics for the trip as the action was concentrated in short bursts and whenever it happened we were more focussed on the fish than the pics! I didn't even bring a camera up with me - so thanks goes to Trent for taking the photos.

All in all was a fun trip, with enough fish caught to get us back up there again - particularly to get that elusive beakie.

The snorkelling, weather and views like this from the lighthouse lookout will also be things that will keep bringing me back. What a great part of WA.

Dan

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