Just had two days of good weather and with Willy Weather warning us this could be the end of it for a while we planned two days of solid fishing. Day one coincided with Pete's birthday so after a night in town at Pinocchios Restaurant to celebrate, we decided the birthday boys best present would be to land a billfish. Consequently after a relatively early start at Tantabiddy we spent about 5 hours trolling the strike zone that had produced our other billfish. It is sad to report that after a days trolling in 2 boats not a single billfish was caught, although we did have at least one sailfish show a great deal of interest in our lure.
The day wasn't a complete right off as we brought home two Mahi Mahi and Pete's boat brought home a Mahi Mahi, Wahoo and a Tuna but we certainly would have swapped them all for one billfish.
Day two was spent at the Murions. First stop was the reef that protrudes out from the southern most tip. Casting "sliders" we boated a "keeper" Grass Emperor that provided a good fight in the 2 metres of shallow water. Peter's boat caught a small trevally but we left this very fishy looking reef without hooking any of the jumbo GTs that are supposed to live there.
After a brief stint with the deep diving lures we decided to head out from the north island to a drop off in about 45 metres of water where we had some great bottom bouncing with Ilia and Cathy.
After finding the drop off it became apparent that conditions were entirely different to our last time there. Our drift line was cutting at 90 degrees through where we caught the fish a couple of weeks ago. After a drift or 2 we did find a nice cod that Stelleen boated and for the next couple of hours each drift over the 7 or 8 metre drop off produced at least one good hook up.
In the end we had a couple of nice Rankin Cod a nice Estuary Cod and Spangled Emperor. Big trevally gave us some great runs and one even snapped Stelleen's rod.
We finished up being "sharked" on our last 3 fish so we decided to try a little trolling through the passage that separates the South and North Murions. No luck so after a quick snorkel we headed for home.
After the usual time at the filleting table we bagged and froze some great table fish and enjoyed a very tastey meal of fresh trevally. With the weather turning sour we are making plans for our next camping spot a few hundred kilometres north and Cape Keraudren. Stay tuned.