Just recently, I attended a trip to the legendary Jewel Reef (well almost). It was the culmination of 9 months of anticipation and planning, but the day we had all eagerly anticipated had finally arrived.

Most of our 13 man contingent hailed from Brisbane with only myself and my mate Guazzo residing from Northern Queensland. After meeting up with the group for a pub lunch in Cairns, it soon became obvious that our group was made up of a real good bunch of blokes of different ages and fishing preferences but one thing that was set in stone was the fact that we were all mad keen and all portrayed an obsession for fishing. So much so, that our wives/girlfriends barely got a mention over the course of the 5 days and any conversation revolved around stickbaits, plastics or the gear ratio on the latest Stella 20000SW.

Simply touching down and stepping foot on the exclusive Lizard Island made me feel like I was living the lifestyle of the rich and the famous. A few beers and a feed at the laid back Marlin Bar had us chilled out and excited about the journey we were just about to embark on.

The 3 metre swells did nothing to phase the skipper of Reel Chase (Brett) and the two deckies (Jake & Kiwi), in fact rougher conditions were looked on more favourably in terms of a successful marlin bite. I was one of the 5 from our group who elected to try catch a marlin on the first day. Halco Laser Pro’s were deployed on 2 of the Tiagra 12 Wides in an effort to troll up some shark mackerel to use for marlin bait. It took all of 5 minutes before the ratchet on one of the reels starting singing that sweet tune. Guazzo was the man on strike and took no time to subdue a descent size shark mackerel to the deck. Within the next hour, we had another few of these fish as well as a few Mack Tuna in the bait-hold.

Deckhands Kiwi and Jake wasted no time in gutting and stitching these baits up in preparation to try convert them into something a lot bigger and preferably something with a big, long bill on the front of it. It wasn’t hard to see that Kiwi had done this a few times before as he made this surgical procedure look oh so easy.

3 mackerel skip baits were deployed on each of the Tiagra 130’s and hooked up to the outriggers. Here began the waiting game. We all took turn at taking 30 minutes on strike whereby if any of the rods went off within your allocated 30 minute stint, the fight was yours.

Half an hour later, foaming white water from around the skipbait and a long bill slashing from side to side indicated another marlin strike. This time it was Guazzo’s turn at strike. Robson Green yells of “Get In” circulated around the back deck. Yes, finally a fish that stayed connected. Guazzo knocked this little 200lb marlin over relatively quickly but not before an impressive acrobatic performance.

At the end of day 2, a decision was mate to travel further afield which gave us all a greater diversity of options. These included exploring the coral-lined creeks on the island for mangrove jack (yes folks, coral-lined creeks), land-based GT/trout popping and bommie popping on the back deck of Reel Chase. Obviously the first choice option was GT popping from Reel Chase but we opted to offer this option to those he hadn’t gone out and ventured too much.

Guazzo, Damien (Wolfpack) and myself decided to pop a reef edge whilst land-based from the island. This spot looked absolutely magic. It was low tide which enabled us to walk about two-thirds of the way out to the reef edge and pop over the drop-off. The only problem with this was that there was still a good 25-30m of shallow reef between where we were standing and the edge which was just too deep for us to wade through. Having this shallow, jagged, reefy bottom between us and any potential fish certainly was going to test the men from the boys and make fighting and landing a fish from this position near-on impossible.

Wolfpack was the first to load up on his big Stella and Saltiga rod. The GT smashed his garfish style popper in less than 3 feet of water and lasted all of about 3 seconds before it blew him away despite using heavy gear.

I grabbed the Stella 20000 and GT Special popping rod from the back deck of the boat and took it with me just in case. Seeing Wolfpack get dusted up so quickly and the sore point of my GT loss the day previous, ensured I went out with the big guns blazing straight away. I casted out the big gear and was automatically followed by a 4 foot long reef shark. On the very next cast, he snaffled my popper which led to a torrid little battle amongst the shallow, reefy outcrops until it was landed. Wolfpack also landed a smaller version and Guazzo got bitten off by one as well.

The big outfit was starting to weight a ton, so I reverted back to my 5-8kg T-Curve/Stradic 4000Ci4 combo and threw out a much smaller 105mm Halco Roosta popper to see if I could pick up something a little more manageable...maybe a trout or other reefy? A massive eruption behind my popper happened within the first few “bloops” over the ledge. It appeared to be a swing and a miss but on the very next “bloop”, my little popper was smashed by what I assume to be a good GT. It had me busted off on a bommie before I could even blink.

Wolfpack picked up the big gear and was also owned by a good GT a short time later. It turned out that the only way we may have had half a chance at landing one of these bruisers would have been if we were in the dory flicking towards the drop-off and bringing the popper back toward the deep but due to the rough conditions, the dory was in-operable.

Once we got back to the mother-ship, we were told that the guys who went GT popping on board Reel Chase ended up with 5 nice GT’s, the best being around 15-20kg.

The boys who went exploring the island creeks ended up with about 15 quality mangrove jacks as well as a swag of tarpon. Clearly this fish had never seen a lure before. This sounded like an option I could not pass up and would be my plan during the low tide on the final afternoon.

Dawn broke on the final morning of the trip. It was now high tide and with the water up at this level, it only left one descent point on the island worth having a flick. Long-toms, stripeys and barracuda were the main stayers for the morning but it was Steve who landed a beautiful coral trout on stickbait and was the best fish of the morning.

A few hours later, it was now low enough where we could trek up the creek to where the jacks were caught on the previous day.

The island creeks on Howick Island were like nothing I had ever seen before. These creeks were mangrove lined but had a floor of coral. They were absolutely beautiful. An old faithful 4 inch Atomic Prong (Red Pumpkin) was rigged up in attempt to catch myself some of these much anticipated red fish. Despite the majority of Jacks from the previous day being released, the Jacks seemed to have been spooked and relatively shut down. The only Jack that was caught during this second session was caught by me and was caught on the Prong.

It just goes to show, that when the fish shut down and wise-up to our artificial offerings – the Atomic Prong still gets results due to its extremely life-like appearance. This was a cracker Jack (no pun intended) at about 48cm and my second best Jack to date. 5 casts later I was onto another fish and thought it was another Jack. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a little Red Throat Emperor connected to my Prong. It was such an amazing experience to catch a characteristically reef orientated, demersal fish, amongst a coral lined, mangrove walled creek.

This was a great trip. It could have been absolutely epic if the weather gods decided to play the game and give us just a little reprieve and salvation, but it was not to be, and that is fishing sometimes. Ultimately, we made the best out of a bad situation and left no stone un-turned. This is all any die hard angler could do in this circumstance. Some great fish were still landed and we had a ball with a great bunch of blokes.

Image Upload: