Steve Coote’s Trip To Wilderness Island

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Just had Steve and Ben Coote and Rob Page up here for the week. They were originally going to bring their own boat up but decided it was too big and too far to tow it from Perth.

So, we decided to do a bit of land based fishing whilst they were here and a bit of island hopping with the boat to get to different destinations. Had a great day off one island close by, just walking along, sight casting at fish we could see buzzing around. We did really well on mackerel, catching one nearly every cast there for a while. There were a couple of nice little Broad-bar Mackerel landed too and a handful of Mangrove Jack. Very fast action when fishing from the rocks and always good fun on light gear.

Its great to have so many different fishing options up our sleeves over here when the wind is up. Just poke up the creeks when its really blowing (no sand flies either when its windy. Usually it’s a given when fishing creeks up north). Other days when it’s blowing we just tuck in behind little islands and headlands and keep at it. Great for people who want to bring their own boats here, as they can stay safe in the calm waters even when its hitting 40 knots offshore.

One particular day when the wind backed off we headed out to an offshore shoal to have a crack at some bigger stuff. Only once before have I seen fish on the sounder like it. I was yelling at the guys to come and look at the sounder and they were asking me if that was the reef. I said ‘no that’s all fish, start casting’. The first couple of casts not only produced nice Trevally, but also got the school off the bottom and schooling around the boat. Everywhere we looked, fish, fish, fish. We caught Giant Trevally, golden Trevally and Bludgers one after another. We fish barbless over here so quite often we dropped 2 or 3 fish on each cast before hooking up another and reeling it in for the score board.

It was a new Wilderness Island record, a total of 47 fish caught and released in exactly 2 hours. Well done Steve, Ben and Pagy. Hope we see you again soon.

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