Mackay Fishing Report June 2009

Reefari Mackay Fishing Charters Report — June 2009

Well hello again everybody and once again welcome to the June edition of On The Chew. June has been a sensational month for Reefari charters with the fishing leaving all who experienced it both lost for words and a tad sore. Once again we have been really busy and with the weather staying reasonable, perfect at times, managed to get about 95% of our charters out. There was even one stint there where we got 6 trips in a row and all of our guests went home with a big bag of reef fish.

For the first half of June, the mornings were the go with the run out tide fishing the best. If the tide was a bit later on in the morning and we had plenty of time, then we would pull a couple of lures around the islands and nail a couple of Spaniards.

June seems to be the first run of these fish and they will hang around until it starts to warm up again, with Humpbacks also showing up.

Catching them is a fairly simple exercise as they hang out in packs and are very aggressive feeders that will smash most types of lures or trolled baits.

We were picking them up on most trips and it sure is a great way of getting everyone on board pumped up first thing in the morning with a screaming mackerel run.

Remember also that the Mackay Game Fishing Club holds its annual Spanish shootout on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th of July, with some great prizes on offer.

Now, I would like to talk to everyone a little about Giant Trevally, GTs, Turrum or whatever you want to call them. Please refer to the beginning of the article where I mentioned that our guests were coming home a little sore. Well these beasts are the culprits. Whilst trolling for Macks, Some Giant GT’s decided to get into the action, smashing our lures connected to a Calcutta 400 barra combo with 30lb braid.

As they passed over the mark we watched in awe as two truck sized Trevally came flying up and belted both of our lures.

One of these fish was easily 70lb and grabbed the TLD25, the other which later weighed in at 24 kg grabbed the Calcutta. There are few fish in the ocean that will attack a lure with the ferocity that a GT does, in fact the idea of Big Willie Mason tackling a midget could be something you might describe it as.

By the time I realized what was happening, the Calcutta was half empty and I found myself having to back down on it the way you would with a rampaging marlin.

The other rod was running so hard that the boys were struggling to get the rod out of the rod holder. When they finally did an epic struggle ensued – man against beast. Now we discovered a problem, with one big fish going south and the smaller one north.

We managed to hold onto both of them for about 10 minutes when the hooks pulled on the big one and we were left with the smaller of the two on the Calcutta. After a 25 minute battle, the massive fish lay subdued on the deck – beaten by a very determined fisherman and 30lb line – not a bad effort at all.

A couple of photos and it was time to release him and do it again – and believe it or not we got another one that went 17kg on the very next pass. The biggest one we ended up boating in June was by a bloke named Jacques and it went just under 30kgs.

Aside from all that the coral trout have been chewing their heads off on the falling tide with 28 fish taken in 3 consecutive trips. These were not small fish either, with most of them averaging 3-4 kgs. Big Grass lipper and nannygai have been prolific and there have been some very nice red emperor mixed in as always.

We even took out Beaconsfield mine survivor – Todd Russell for a fish and he got stuck into some quality nannies and trout. It’s probably worth mentioning too that Kevin Boyle- owner of our 41 foot steber– went for a fish and showed off his skill by landing 3 rather rare bonefish whilst on a trip to the islands, not one but three, amazing stuff!!

That’s pretty much it for this month, I hope everyone out there had as good a month as we did,  and hound the boss to get a Christmas trip together for the boys and girls, but make sure to book early!!.

Ok guys and gals

Until next month

Stop wishin!!, Lets go fishin!!

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