Just got back from Nanga Bay after 2 weeks of awsum fishing. 

I was lucky enough to get an invite from Darren to go to his parents place in Nanga for a couple weeks of fishing. They owned the Nanga station, before CALM bought most of it, along with the Nanga Bay resort and caravan park. Ted and Maureen sold off the resort and caravan park (that now looks like it has gone down hill with the new owners) a few years ago but kept the homestead and a few shacks above the caravan park. Also a small, 1400 arces, of land surrounding the place. As there were already guests in the homestead we stayed in one of the shacks and it was a fine place to be. Right next to the BBQ and spa.

Now i'm pretty keen on getting a stack of photo's to show all the unlucky ones back home how good a place you are at but with this trip the fishing action was pretty hot when they were on so a lot was missed out. Real hard to get the camera in your hands when your rod is buckled over.

Having Darren there with 30 years of local knowledge was invaluable. First up was his secret pinkie hole that produced at any time of the day or night. During the daylight hours we would be releasing 30+ fish, mostly undersize, and at night we would be releasing 15+ fish, mostly oversize. I have to say that when you get a monster pinkie hooked up, in 15m, with 30Lb line you really have a fight on your hands.

Just an inch too big..Lol

Another hump head.

And of course all the biggest ones were released. That Tony our chef for the trip.

I was told the Bluebone up there can get pretty big so we tried for a few days to target them but only ended up getting a few of the smaller ones around the islands and when we were on a coral patch. The little crab plastics had been given to us by a mate who lives in Alaska and heard us talking about targeting Bluebone with plastic crabs instead of trying to catch the fresh ones. Turns out they work fine but the fish just have to be there.

Trolling is not something that Darren or Tony were into but when i'm up north i think it is a must. After seeing some guys at the cleaning station on the beach with some monster Spanish Mackerel they were finally talked into it, if we saw a surface bustup only. Well on our way out to the coral patch in pretty windy and rough conditions we saw that bust up and i finally got a lure in. We hooked this fine longtail and i was keen to keep after them as they are, in my opinion, the finest eating tuna up north.

Well the guys couldnt see them within 20m of the boat anymore so were not keen to continue chasing them. Much to my disgust. Anyway after eating some tuna that night they had their eyes peeled for the rest of the trip. Unfortunatly we never got into them again.

There were plenty of surface bustups that we did chase around after but it always turned out to be little bonito.

Another one of those secret spots Darren had us going to was quite a large area to drift over for Black Snapper. (Bluelined Emperor/Grass Emperor). We hooked a few just over 4Kg but our keepers were in the 34-40cm range. The biggest problem with this area was the sharks. There are 28 species of sharks in the Shark Bay area and i'm sure we caught them all. We had stocked up on gear for the trip but found we had to make a run into Denham for more hooks. Bloody sharks. Anyway here is some Black Snapper for you.

Other than the fishing it was just have a brew and watch the sun set.