Seeing as Bouttime has got his boat in for service I thought I had better take him out and show him that the tinny brigade know how to catch fish. We got over to Tantabiddi at 7.45 with absolutely glass conditions. We managed to get lines in the water at 8.00 and trolled up the reef looking for a mackie for a mate thats heading back east and wanted a few fillets. Without a touch we got to the spot and set out the baits, first drift Steve pulls up a nice Coral Trout that gave him some stick in the shallow water. I managed to pick up a small spangled and then the plagues of small emperor moved in.

We decided to troll again up to my next location and encountered a good double hookup of sizeable spaniards. Mine was a good fish and took some serious line on 10kg, only to be sharked not far from the boat. Steve managed to get his in and we bled him boatside, unfortunately we cut a bit too close to the gaff and slip, off he sunk into the depths to be sharked. :( A quick bog lap around the spot saw us land another good spaniard of 6-7kg, we were a little more careful with this one and slipped him into the icebox to bleed out. As we weren't far from our next spot we pulled up and took a drift and that is when we encountered another magical Exmouth experience. We were in 25m of water and were looking at our baits on the bottom.  I was first to hookup and got a small shark of 3 foot and then Steve managed to snavel a nice rankin and dark tailed sea-perch.  On the next drop we witnessed 7 decent sized sharks circling underneath us keeping an eye on anything released or sent down. The visibility was sensational, I took some video footage that will hopefully turn out, pure magic!  You could see baitfish, fish on the bottom, sharks in the middle and tuna on the surface.

I then talked Steve into putting out a couple of skirts, the only 2 on the boat as I wasn't planning on going for a marlin or sailfish. About 5 minutes into trolling a solid sailfish came up and smashed the jethead Steve was running and took a pretty decent run. Caught up in the excitement I backed off the throttle too early and he shook the hooks, not happy Jan! We got back to our first spot pretty quickly and took one last drop where Steve pulled a 7kg mack tuna off the bottom which we released. After that the bite seemed to shut down and we had to be in by 12 so Steve could get some sleep before night shift.

All in all a top morning in sensational glassy Exmouth conditions and a nice tucker box of high quality fish. Sweet!

Cheers,

Adam