Hey Crew,

Its been a while since I did a local Exmouth report, mainly because I haven't been out in ages due to the foul south easterlies.  Anyway, today presented an opportunity to go out a find some new ground and see what had moved onto some of the spots we had been resting for several months.

Heading over disappointment hill (past the lighthouse caravan park), Jeff (deepwater) and I could see the oil slick water and knew we were going to be in for a good day.  Our only concern was the .18 low tide and trying to launch from Tantabiddi, which proved to be no problem.  I decided a couple of quick photo's of the conditions were well and truly necessary to supplement the report to follow.

Our plan was to put out some skip baits for big marlin and head out to the goldband spot.  With teasers working feverously and baits going off, we were feeling somewhat confident, regardless of my feeling that full moon game fishing is a bit of a waste of time.  After 45 minutes of trolling the current lines we had only had one enquiry that we didn't see, so we decided to try and get a few fish into the esky.  First drop resulted in a small but tasty sized goldband, which was quickly despatched into the ice slurry.  3 more drops and we had 6, a great start to the morning.

We then decided we would head down to a common marlin ground that we fish quite regularly that produces fish of all sizes throughout most of the year.  Upon reaching the area, we noticed a 25m + drop off on the sounder that we decided to mark, after 5 minutes of discussion we convinced each other that we should go back around and examine the ground properly.  We only had 3 drifts over the spot, but the following pictures show what we found and what we caught.  It will definately be an area I go back to with some jigs as there seems to be a current eddy that flows around it, one minute we were drifting south and then caught the ledge and moved directly east.  In hindsight, I should have taken a photo of the GPS as that was a spectacle in itself.  I decided not to fish the spot to try keep the boat in position as the current had started to move quite strongly, I also didn't want to take my eyes off the sounder!

Anyway, the current got the better of us and we decided to move down to our 100m red spot, which was absolutely lit up with fish, but as the tide was about to turn it appeared everyone had already had their lunch.  Putting the marlin gear out again we hardly even got the boat up to speed and Jeffo was screaming that there was a bill up on the right, turning around I see him smash the left lumo short corner and within seconds of missing that out on the black shotgun trying to bash it senseless.  It hit all three lures and hit the back lure 3 times only to miss the hooks, to say we were disappointed was an understatement as it would have topped the day right off.  We looped back around and worked the ground hard for half an hour, but as usual, not to be seen again. 

Heading back towards north passage we found one other spot that had a little bit of fluff on the sounder that perked our interest.  Again, first drop and Jeff's on, this time to a solid Robinson Sea Bream.  To see if it was a fluke I put him back over it again, this time to have a very friendly north west blowie come up to say hi. 

We decided on that note it was time to go, especially seeing as tantas only has 2 half bog mats left at the moment and very low tides with the springs (not an easy retrieve, but still not a problem)

Other notables for the day were Jeffo's monster catfish, his other north west blowie, the 9 ft sandbar whaler that took my goldband from 80m down and wouldn't bust off.  The 5 different varieties of sharks from 6 to 10ft that swum around the boat at the new deep spot.  I guess the only other notable was Jeffro getting his form back, well done mate and cheers for sharing a great day, I'm happy to guide you anytime. 

Cheers,

Adam