with the billfish shootout on this weekend taking all of the boats out of "all the other spots" and some forcast magical weather, Fozz, Kelvin8tor and myself decided to take my 5.2m ali cab over to the montes on a solo recon mission. An a mission it was....

Where to start, we were umming and ahhring where to go and what to do. We were going to go to a few spots we had been to before then on a final weather inspection and a quick phone call to Andy Mac we decided to go to the montes. We left my joint at 0130 to drive down to fortescue river mouth (1 hr 30 min drive) Got to the ramp just in time for high tide, and after a few final checks we launched the boat on an absolute sheet of glass and we were on our way.

We made our way accross a dark indian ocean onroute to one of te nearer islands, only about a 14 mile journey where we decided to drop the pick until the first hint of sunlight came over the horizon. At about 0530 we weighed anchor and set off on the remaining 33 miles to our nice little island (base camp for the one day and night we were staying)

We passed through the rigs early morning it was awesome, the montes came into view and still the ocean was a piece of glass. We couldnt have asked for a better transit. It was then that things actually became a little overwhelming. By that i mean there are over 200 bits of rock and island in that place and we just didnt know where to start.

We went for a bit of a spin after dumping all of the jerry cans and swags etc. Had a bit of a pop for not much luck, fozz was doing allright on the placky dackies catching jacks, flag, we also got bluebone, cod, mack tuna and a heap of other stuff just flicking them at small bommies and bits of reef.

Well it was getting warm and we wanted to go for a bit of a dive around some of the islans. We found a group of rock bommies and pulled up at each of them along the way for a dive. We stumbled accross schools (thats right schools) of trout saw heaps of chinaman, rankins, bluebone and your other typical reef species. I also followed a largish GT into a cave to find another 4 in there with it. There were 5 good sized GT's just cruising around. We speared a few trout and grabbed a few crays before heading back to camp to chill out for a while. Sheldon trolled up a nice trout on the way back to our island, and then proceeded to put the trebble of his lure into his palm and out another part of his palm. Great, well i bet he is glad he listed to me about some of the rules of the trip, CRUSHED barbs and no lures on deck, hey matey!!!

Well we chilled out for a while then rigged up for an arvo session trolling for trout. It didnt take long. We found a piece of ground that we aptly named "the trout highway". Was in about 9 meters of water rising up from 19. We pulled probably a dozen trout off that area in as many passes. On top of that we got bricked by a few unstopables, caught about 5 shark mackeral the bigges was about 8-10 KG's and a couple of spanyids. not a bad way to finish off the arvo. We probably caught over 20 trout in the short time we fished that day, plus all the other stuff we cant remember, we wernt even taking photos because we just wanted to get the rods in for another pass, it was HOT!!!!

Fozz's first on an SP,

one of the baby Sharkies

Anyway we went back to camp and after the early early start we all crashed. Got up nice and early to top up the boat with fuel, pack up (unfortunately only a short trip this one) and head back closer to home. had a pretty good run back to an island closer to home where we stoped for a quick beach session. Got a heap pf baby GT's, Bigeye trevs, spanyids, queenies, longtoms, and i cant even remember what else.

The nor easter kicked in after that, i was glad that we got the good weather for the open water part of our transit would have been a slow ol trip home otherwise.

All in all was a great trip, none of us had been there before, had no idea where to go and what to do but still managed to get quite a few nice fish along the way. Next time we will hae to stay at least three days i feel

good stuff fellas, had a ball altough i dont think this overnighter helped my flu one bit, feel like crap!!!

Brad