Headed out with a mate today on his 4.5m Ali Center Console. Weather was absolutely glorious with mirror conditions all day.

First stop was some reefy ground near angel. Sam and I jumped in with the spear gun and went for a dive. Royce stayed on the boat and caught small bluebone and spanish flag, nothing really worth keeping. Sam speared a Coral Trout, which was just a touch over 45cm. A bit small but legal nontheless. Sam losed his spearhead so it was time to push on so we smashed it out to hamersley shoal.

Out came the lures and we started trolling. It wasn't long and sam was the first to hook up on his storm white/red head. The mackie powered off towards south africa and he only managed a couple of turns on the handle before it bit him off (we forgot to pack wire ).

Re-rigged and lures back out again. About 5 mins later I hooked up to a smaller fish which I thought was a small mack tuna but turned out to be a small spaniard about 92cm. Not sure if we would get anything else I put him in the esky.



Lures out again and this time my Rapala CD14 red head hooked up again. I handed it to sams girlfriend so she could catch a fish but when it got tangled with the other line I regained control to try and avoid losing the fish. It was a bit of a miracle but we landed it without too many dramas and then managed to untagle the lines.



Lines out again and this time sams line went off. Sam gave Royce the OK and he had a turn to catch a mackie a touch bigger than my previous one. He was stoked as this was not only the first mackie he's ever caught but the biggest fish he'd caught, ever.



Lines went out again and once again, my Rapala CD14 red head hooked up, this time a bit bigger. Sam reeled in the other line and was hit on the way in, we had a double hookup. This is when the highlight of the day happened. Sams mackie got completely airborne and while it was in mid air a HUGE shark blitzed out of the water and hit the mackie mid air.. when it landed, another shark joined him and it wasn't long before he was winding in slack line.

It was no time to be stuffing around so I cranked up the drag on the stella and made pretty light work of my mackie, around 15 kilos, to avoid getting sharked like Sam.



There was a few others, much bigger than the ones pictured, that we lost due to tight drags and pulled hooks and not having wire leader. Surprisingly, we did much better than I expected considering we had no wire, all fish were hooked firmly in the mouth except one.

The Rapala CD14 red head was the standout lure. A bit surprising as I've never had much success on the rapalas before, but tried it on a whim. Sam did well on the RMG Scorp 150 red head (3m) and I'm sure the Storm would have performed well had he not lost it on the first fish.

All in all a standout day on the macks, although dissapointing we didn't land any of the bigger ones. Been a while since I've seen macks on the chew like this.