Just got back from a pretty epic trip up to Gnaraloo for our annual fishing trip. We were blessed by the weather gods to say the least with most days being pretty much glass conditions. A couple of small lows, but all in all alot of really big highs. Here is a write up, hopefully might help out a few people or just a good read for some so grab yourself a beer and read a bit of dribble!!

Day 1

Left Perth at around 5am headed to Carnarvon to stay the night. Pretty non eventful trip up. Got to Carnarvon booked into the accomodation and went to the pub for a feed. Stayed at Carnarvon central apartments, the people running it are great. Luckily we had one of the deckies sleep in the boat that night as we had a couple of locals jump the fence and started looking around the boat. Luckily the bloke who runs the joint saw them on camera and came running out with a dolphin torch and scared them away.... The deckie was none the wiser until I told him in the morning haha

Day 2

Headed from Carnarvon to Gnarlaoo. Stopped in at BP on the way out of Carnarvon for breaky and fuel. Saw a bloke that I recognised his face but didnt know where from, hit him up and started chatting and found out he was the owner of Snapbait (Paul his name is) have seen him on a youtube chanel I always watch and thats where I knew his face from haha. Anyway he was on his way back from Exmouth and he gave us a heap of his products to try on the condition that if we got anything we send him through some pics. Bloody stoked with the amount of stuff he gave us and as you can see further down they produced well. Carnarvon to Gnaraloo track was non eventful, stopped at the king waves kill sign for the pic and to let tyres down...... Then it was the slow trip in. Wasnt extremely bad, we were sitting on about 40-50kms per hour and slowing right down at the corrugated rough parts.... I lost my RH tail light on my boat and my number plate bracket almost come off but managed to rescue it.. One of the other boats went passed me as we were doing something and noticed their number plate hanging off, luckily had reception at this point so gave him a buzz and he was able to rescue it...... The 3rd boat has bigger issues... His brake caliper bolts came loose and came out causing 2 of his brake calipers to only being held on by 1 bolt... Luckily for him there 6 of us going were diesel mechanics hahaha. Removed one of the brake calipers and made a packing for the piston and cable tied that up and out the way, used the bolt out of that for the other caliper that was missing one and tightned the bolts in the other 2 calipers... All sweet!! 

Got into Gnaraloo and unloaded.... We were all pretty excited so headed down the beach to look at it for the first time. As we pulled up this big dark storm cloud decided to come over us bringing rain, wind so none of us were keen to launch. At this point looking at the beach I was a little bit worried. My boat is the biggest out of the lot and weights about 3 tonne and I was scared I was going to struggle!! Back to the fishermans lodge for beers and prepare for fishing the next day.

Day 3

Up early as we were all excited and had to wait for the sun to come up... Sun came up and we were all ready to launch. We all helped each other out. We would back 1 boat down at a time and put all tyres, trailer tyres and car tyres up onto Max trax. We would then launch the boat as normal and then drive off the Max trax.... Actually was super simple and within half an hour were all launched and ready to fish... I was surprised at how easy it was when we all helped each other out in a steady manner.

2 boats headed south, 1 headed north and I pretty much headed straight out then slighly south. We spent a total of $59 on crappy bait so we decided to get some fresh bait first. Trolling for no longer than 10 minutes had 2 blue tuna on board, beautiful bait. Kept going and got a school mack and another tuna. Beautiful bait was sorted..... Headed out to around the 70s and trolled looking for ground.. Picked up 3 big yellowfin tuna... No joke we stopped trolling because we would put the lures back in the water and without even getting to trolling speed we were on again, it was bloody good fun. Kept the 3 yellows and marked some good ground that we went back and dropped on.

First demersal on the boat for the trip was a 800mm Large mouth Nannygai! We were stoked to say the least! The nanny was caught off fishwrecked sponsor Mackdog Tackle underdog jig. Faught like a freight train. Bloody stoked with that as the first fish. Sounded around, dropped and got a pretty decent bag of Rankin, Peal Perch and we Kept a big tomato cod to see how it tasted. The bite went dead around 11am... Could see the fish all over the sounder but couldnt get anything decent apart from Rankin to bite. Headed in to the 30's to see if we could get a few shallow species... Found this awesome little flare up which turned into our honey hole for a week.... First drop landed 2 decent Red Emperor, landed a heap of other species like massive spanglies, rankin... Fish came back on the bite around 1:30pm which is what will happen most days... Ended up trolling for a couple of hours on the way back in to get bait for the next day. Got a heap of tuna and school mack for strip baits.

We had all agreed to meet back in the bay every day at 4 so we could help retrieve.... This is where I thought it would be shit.... Once again set up the trailer, cars on Max Trax but this time had a tow vehicle with a snatch strap... Helped that the the tow vehicle was like a tractor.... Nissan Patrol ute that has been done up like a comp truck.... More power and torque than a mapped 200 series cruiser... A few by-standers on the beach watching us and taking videos but all in all with the way we had it set up pulling out my 3 tonne boat was actually reasonable easy. The only time one of the cars got bogged was when he wasnt hooked up to the snatch vehicle. Apart from that once again it was actually reasonably simple... First day took a while to get us all sorted but by days 2-3-4 we had it down pack and was retrieving all 3 boats in about 25 minutes (1 boat was mooring for the week)

Anyway back at the fillet station one of the boats had hit the mother load. They got their limit of red emperor and had to release a whole heap and stop fishing because they had their limit. Their stories were epic, they were showing us videos, photos, they did bloody well......To the point all of us wanted to follow them out the next day hahahha

Filleted the fish and back to the fishing lodge for rums, dinner and presidents and assholes haha

Day 4

Like I said the whole week was good weather but today was epic..... Absolute glass off... All launched easy as and out on the water all heading in convoy to the red spot the boys found the day before..... Got to the spot and it was loaded... But as thought pretty shut down..... Had a couple of drops and most boats decided to go their own way from here.... A couple headed out deep, a couple shallow. We were headed to a couple of spots we had in about 60 that we were given but on the way we were marking fish everywhere... Driving a couple of hundred metres then there would just be another flare up... Fish werent really congregating on ground just schooling up together.. Ended up gettin 8 reds, a heap of Rankin (Cant get away from these things) and a couple of Cobia..... We found this pretty big school with some awesome looking arches and the drop before netted us 3 Reds so thought his spot was going to be loaded... All of us got ready and dropped down... Before the baits had even hit the bottom all 4 of us were on... The fish smashed the baits and we thought we were onto some bloody good reds...... Turns out we dropped onto a bloody huge school or Rankin haha. Epic with all 4 of us going off at more or less the same time and bringing in these fish.

Called it a day and met the rest of the boats back in at 4..... Once again followed the same method of retrieving and all got out without an issue. Retrieving becomming quicker and quicker.

Back to the fillet station, filleted, bagged the fillets and back to the fishermans lodge...... Today we found that non of the fillets were freezing. One due to the power being turned off every night between 11:00pm and 7am but also the freezer was terribly old... Went for a word with the caretakers and they replaced the freezer, they knew it was on its way out... They actually told us that people normally bought their own freezers and a generator (Even though their website says no generators) so that was lesson learned for next time..... Freezer didnt get much better for the week, but they let us use the freezers in the sheering shed which helped too.

Day 5

We decided to head back to our spot on the first day where we found reds..... We werent dissapointed. Everywhere around this area had schools of bait and schools of reds and we were only in the 30's. Ended up bagging 11 reds with the biggest one being 8.2kgs. Everywhere we went we found good fish. Got a pretty decent bag so we trolled on the way in hoping for some pelagic action. Didnt get much exciting on the troll just a heap of tuna and macks that we kept for bait..... To this point we had only used 1 herring out of the $59 worth of bait that we bought hahaha

Same story... Retrieve at 4pm, fillet, rums, dinner, presidents and assholes hahaha Some of the best times on the trip is the games afterwards haha

Day 6

Decided to put a bit of effort into trolling... We were targetting Spanish Mack.... Nothing special to report from our boat, got 5 mackies, cobia and did a quick drop and got a couple of more reds....... One of the other boats on the other hand.... They decided to go troll out wide to see if they could get Marlin.... They werent dissapointed. The skipper of that boat is pretty full on with his fishing and loves sports fishing and after a battle of over an hour they landed a Marlin that they estimated at 180kgs (Some calculator where you measure the length of the fish and girth was used) but looking at the videos it was a bloody awesome fish and credit to the skipper he did most of the work hahaha! They will remeber that for years to come!

Day 7

With us not being far off a full bag of everything we decided to head out to our little red ground 1 last time to see if we could finish our remaining bag limit with Red fillets...... Now remember we were given the Snapbait jigs at the servo at the start of the trip.... One of my deckies sent one of those down and he was on big... We actually called it for a small shark, he was fishing with pretty light gear..... To be honest I was driving and I didnt even worry about getting the net ready I was that adament it was a small shark hahaha.... Getting ready at the side of the boat to help him out with it I got a glimpse..... Wholly shit its a big bloody Red!!! Scrambled to get the net and hoiked in this fish!!! Bloody ripper. Measured 880mm and went 11.61kgs after it had been cled on the scales back at the fillet station.... biggest red on my boat by far, was a bloody donkey!!! Stoked to say the very least on jigs that were given to us too hahaha!! The whole boat was buzzing... Spent the next couple of hours landing a few more reds but still in awe of the one in the esky... Headed in and picked up 2 more macks on the way in....... Few stories and photos at the fillet station with a few of the other blokes staying there coming to look at the red we were riding a high and we were done with the fillets we wanted for the trip!

Day 8

Our last day of going out on the water we decided to go for a dive and see if we could find a couple of crays...... Pretty dissapointing really, tried alot of places before the wind blew up but only managed 1 cray which was pretty big though... Back in around midday and pulled all the boats in, including the guys that had moored for the week.... All came in non eventful pretty easy..... All in all was actually easy launching and retrieving as long as you had a method, had your wits about you and you werent being a hero (Like some we witnessed haha)

Headed back to camp to clean up, pack all the boat and have our last supper with each other! Told stories, had a few laughs and a few rums around the camp fire. Awesome company, awesome weather, awesome fishing!!!!

Day 9

Woke at 3:30am and started the journey back with the number plate cable tied on and no RH tail light we didnt get stopped by the Monarch which was good haha..... Avoiding Kangaroos on that Gnaraloo road at that time is also hard work!!! 

Got back home around 5:30pm... Unloaded... Sorted fillets... Bloody great trip

Few things we learnt that might help others

-Take your time launching and retrieving.. Have max tracks and a method of how you want to get in and get out. Dont rush... I know you want to try get in and get out so you dont sink down but found that is you took your time, everyone helped it was really easy

-Take your own freezer and generator.... Engels wont cut it.. We tried.

-Dont have high expectations of the station.... Its pretty run down and doesnt look like its well maintained. From stories we were told by someone at the station the current lease owner is looking to sell. No money going in at the moment by the looks and stuff isnt getting maintained... This is my first time there so I have nothing to campare it off but just shit like freezers broken, fridges broken, doors broken, gas leaks so we had to turn off the gas all the time, tables falling apart, roof beams falling apart.... Just not maintained... But once you get passed that and your expectations are lowered it is reasonably comfortable.

- Take  your time on the main road in and out... Saw a few rollers, springs, tyres on the way in.... Just have a coke and enjoy the ride in

- Sharks actually werent that bad. Had expectations of loosing alot of gear but all in all the whole boat was probably only sharked 10 times for the week which was far less than other places we have been

- Bring heaps of rum... Dont run out... We didnt get a lay day thank god but if you do there is absolutely nothing to do except go for a bit of a tour and drink haha

Hope you all had a good read and hope the info helps

Cheers

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