Hi Gents

Another year done and dusted at Gnaraloo and I must say, this year the weather was consistently the worst we have seen in the past 11 years. Our preparation was solid with everything ready to go for another spectacular year at Gnaraloo.

The forecast looked dreadful with strong SE winds predicted for the whole week. Seven days of a very persistent SE, S or SSE wind and a swell of over three metres was always going to make things interesting. Luckily the swell dropped throughout the week.

Our journey up was not without incident and for those of you who frequent Gnaraloo regularly will know that there is always a problem or two to sort out. This year we managed to lose our kayak off the top of the car on the way up. A few may remember my Sat morning SOS. We were lucky enough to pick up a replacement from a mate in Carnarvon (thanks Chris) only to have that one mysteriously go missing from the mooring on our second day there. Nice, swimming or bumming a lift it was. The new replacement hurt the pocket.

We stayed reasonably close to land for a few days fishing a few spots we have that produce some nice Spangled Emperor, Rankin and Snapper. Because of the weather, our strategy had to change as there was no way we were going to get out to our deeper spots. What we did do was stick to our spot for the day instead of moving too much to others. We persisted with the quick drift and at one stage this was cranking at 3kn per hour. Our persistence paid off and we were able to boat many of our favourite species. We targeted certain species each day and were rewarded with some nice fish to bring home to the families.

Bait was the go to method this year and did out fish plastics and the jig. We do love our jigging and did manage some nice tuna, GT’s, Amberjacks, Rankin and other Trevally species on them. There were plenty of Red Emperor around which was good to see, however, many of the bigger ones were taken by the ever-increasing shark population up there. The sharks seemed to leave the smaller (under 5kg) fish alone and anything bigger that was red seemed to get taken about half way up. It was really good to see our spots loaded with quality fish including a good return to the Robinson Sea Bream stocks this year.

Cobia seemed to be in good numbers again and we caught a lot of Cobia on the bottom rigs. We trolled our spots out wider in the 45’s producing the ever-reliable Yellowfin Tuna which were in excellent numbers this year. The usual bust offs, unknown hook ups and multiple spooled reels which we just had to laugh at as there was nothing we could do about it on the lighter gear.

We like to target the Spanish Mackerel by drift baiting stinger rigs. There were good numbers of Spanish Mackerel around and they were all big. The largest would have been 30 kg and the thickness of the steaks was as big as we have seen before. One of the things we notice up at Gnaraloo is that the fish are so healthy, plump and have a good amount of fat on them. Always interesting at the filleting station which has been semi refurbished.

Notable catches and species included in our 20 kilos of fillets were: Red Emperor, Pink Snapper, Rankin Cod, Robinson Sea Bream, Spanish Mackerel, Yellowfin Tuna, Baldchin Groper, Tomato Cod, Perch and Cobia. Notable acceptations this year included: Coral Trout, Coronation Trout and Perl Perch.

Booked for 2018 and looking forward to once again to be challenged by this amazing place in the Gascoyne. Gnaraloo offers so many fishing options to explore and every year seems to throw up new challenges and species to chase.

Highlights for 2017 included:

-          Excellent numbers of undersize Reds

-          Good numbers of big Cobia

-          Big Amberjacks

-          Good numbers of Yellowfin Tuna on the troll

-          Seeing and fishing on a school of Spanish Mackerel as they were feeding.

-          Some cracking underwater footage

Looking forward to seeing a few boats up there next year.

Regards

Dave

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