Well I was going to wait until I edited a video before I posted a report but Ive got over an hour of footage to cut down to a clip and really cant be bothered at the moment. Please bear with me as this is the second time Ive written out this report, the computer froze on me last night about 3 quarters through so I might come across a bit short or photos arent in chronological order so please no sooking! This was our first "North Trip" in our own boat for part-owner Ben and I. We headed up with Bens partners family who had been making the trip to Denham for many years now, fishing out of one hell of a boat.. The 8m+ Black Hawk and our lil 4.8m runabout...

First day out was a pearler, weather-wise and fishing. Bens partner Allie joined us as she would for most days of the trip. Launched out of Denham and the Black Hawk showed us some of their favourite spots that they had found over the years. First spot was loaded with undersized blacks and pinks, with heaps of school macks buzzing around the boat following every fish we brought up. We fished pretty light, mostly 10-20lb and a mix of Zmans and baits. Our favourite little spot was a long reef in about 7m, we did pretty well drifting the back edge of it. We eventually found some nice fish and ended up with a nice bag between the three of us..

The rest of the days we headed out pretty early, applying tactics we use around Perth and try target the bigger pinks early in the morning. The other crew were happy sleeping in and cooking breaky before heading out, after-all, we were supposed to be on holiday..

The juvi pinks were so thick I even hooked one using a bit of my sandwich on a jighead, I was on to a fish before I had even flicked the bail arm over.

Couple nights we headed down to the jetty to try our luck at catching some bait. Managed a couple squid and some stonker snook which turned out to make real good bait for the pinkies.

One arvo we headed over to the Monkey Mia side for something a bit different. Big thanks to Randal who shared some info on the area. We ended up drifting along a current line where the pinkies were going nuts. Allie also managed a nice cod that was released to the eski.

On the way back to the ramp we found the dolphins to be pretty playful..

The next day all the boys and Allie jumped onto the Black Hawk for a trip out of Dirk Hartog. It was rough. I spewed. Alot. Allie lasted one drop before resorting back to the comfiness of the passenger seat, the Kwells really knocked her out. Luckily for me the Allens Snakes tasted just as good coming up as they did going down. Green spew, purple spew, all-kinds-of-colours spew. The fish were biting so we stuck it out..

Well our last day of fishing had arrived, it was pretty blowy in the morning so we opted for an arvo session instead. We stopped at Bent Pin as one of the other boats had been doin really well in the late arvo for good size pinks. I hooked a monster. Every time I got it off the bottom it would slowly start cruising down with the current. After a 15-20min battle I locked up the drag on my lil Shimano 2500 and dragged her up. Unbelievable.

My most embarassing and memorable moment of the trip haha! We headed back to our lil reef in 7m and dropped the anchor and cubed up. It didnt take long for the pinkies to arrive, they were everywhere, even boofing burley on the surface at the back of the boat. I landed the biggest Pinkie we got for the trip on jig, 2cms over the max limit of 70cm for the bay so back she went. Also got my first lil mulla too..

At the pub that night we decided with the fishing being so good and the forecast for the following day being the best day so far it was a no-brainer that we were going to stay one more day. The call was to head out behind Dirk Hartog again. We loaded our boat with extra fuel and the long trip began out to Steep. The 2 big boats headed back out to 80m while we stayed in close to the cliffs to see if we could have some fun on tuna and get Ben his first Spaniard. We rounded the southern end of Dirk and tuna were jumping everywhere you looked, we had never seen anything like it. The urge to just drift and throw stickbaits was immense but we wanted to get some mackies in the catch bag first. Morning started well with a shark mack to Ben and I landed a cheeky one on stickbait while he got his gear ready again.

Well when we started trolling again and the plastic rod holder snapped when a fish hit Bens lure we knew we were onto something quite large! I scrambled to get the rest of the lures in and give chase in the boat, as the last two shark macks were both obliterated by packs of sharks after release!

We couldnt believe what popped up!

The mackie went a touch over 1.5m and didnt quite fit in our catch bag! The rest of the day we had a ball drifting and trolling up and down the cliffs, catching plenty of cobia on jigs and stickbaits, tuna, spaniards, a couple untoppables on jigs, baracouda, even had a wahoo bigger than Bens mackie buzz the boat for a couple minutes but we couldnt entice him to take anything, and a shark that thought it would be a great idea to eat our prop!

Really looking forward to doing it all again next year, maybe even in a new boat ;)

Thanks for reading guys. Beau