Fishing the Abrolhos on a small charter

Hi all,

 

Belated report, as I did this early May, but thought I would post in case others considering similar.

 

I booked a 3 day charter with Whitey on Evolution Fishing Charters to the Abrolhos. He leaves from Kalbarri, and fishes mainly the northern groups, and the advantage of him over others is that it is what I would call a "luxury boat" with only 4 customers on board. You leave early on one day, travel and fish that day, then full day next, then fish and return about 3pm the next day.

 

I fell in love with Kalbarri - beautiful place I hadn't visited for a bit, and brought the family up for a holiday the next week. Accomodation was cheap too, and good food and family activities.

 

Anyway the fishing. The truth is was it blew 20 plus knots most of the time. However we landed about 160+ quality fish between the 4 of us in 3 days. The skipper was on the ball (and the decky) and if it got quiet we moved. The negative is we couldn't do much jigging or deep drop due to the wind.

 

We caught red emperor, coral trout, baldies galore, dhufish, snapper and other emperor, with little interference from sharks, plus a few amberjack, sambos and a few tuna (no mackeral). 

 

Even at mooring we landed 60 cm fish on the herring gear - good giggles. Meals were great, and as the customers were me, my father in law, best mate and his dad - we had a blast. Mate's dad had never caught a decent boat fish so lots of bucket lists ticked off for him. Leather couches to snooze on in transit and comfy bunk beds and a shower made it comfortable.

 

We had plenty of fillets to keep, but realeased the majority of fish. It was a super experience, which could only be improved if the wind was lower, but that is always our problem , and we still caught fish. 

 

The boat is a 15.6m luxury game fishing boat - and they are equipped with high quality gear - top shelf trolling gear, and reels were Penn Slammer IIIs I think which were actually great. No need to bring a thing - all jigs/ plastics provided too which is nice, but sadly we didn't get to use them as much as we could have.

 

Price was about $1800 or so each I think.

 

Few pics attached. 

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Nice work

Mon, 2018-07-09 10:35

 that looks awesome

kirky79's picture

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That looks great

Mon, 2018-07-09 11:19

Great report. That shark bite would of made the fight stop abruptly.

Helen's picture

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Wow. Looks like you had a

Mon, 2018-07-09 12:40

Wow. Looks like you had a great time. Good job. :)

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Paul_86's picture

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 Looks like a great trip

Mon, 2018-07-09 13:02

 Looks like a great trip Ricey, despite the 20knot winds! 

And yeah, Kalbarri is a great little town!

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Date Joined: 08/06/15

 Looks like a cracker trip. I

Mon, 2018-07-09 14:08

 Looks like a cracker trip. I like the idea of a small crew. What sort of price per person are you looking at?

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Date Joined: 29/03/13

that's value for money

Mon, 2018-07-09 14:16

 defiantly a fan of smaller charters. You would have easily walked away with you 10kg each. 

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Down the Line

 

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Faulkner Family's picture

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 well done all round. its

Mon, 2018-07-09 15:21

 well done all round. its great seeing someone getting the big fish on for the first time. sounds like the charter was well worth the coin spent. been out with whitet when in jurien and he always put you onto the fish 

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RUSS and SANDY. A family that fishes together stays together

uncle's picture

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Looks like a

Mon, 2018-07-09 17:12

 Good trip

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all aggressive fish love bigjohnsjigs

Callum24's picture

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Good report mate love the pic

Tue, 2018-07-10 11:44

Good report mate love the pic of the yellow fin tuna

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 Awsome and thanks for the

Tue, 2018-07-10 12:42

 Awsome and thanks for the report.  some great pics

has to be the first I've heard of that supply jigs and placcys.  


happy customers in those pics

 

 

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 mint 

Tue, 2018-07-10 18:45

 mint