Tuna on a fly

Strange but true. We decided to go for a fish today even though the weather was marginal. The boat and the fishers needed a run!. So Dion rang around and we had two boats up for a fish.

We decided to leave the boat ramp at 5am and head out to a spot off Rattlesnake Island. Liam and I arrived at the spot first while Dion and his crew collected live bait from one of the marks closer to Magnetic Island.

The spot looked OK with a nice show on the sounder. we did a couple of drifts and Liam landed a nice nannygai. He followed this up with a couple more. When Dion arrived we did a few drifts together again Liam getting a few hits and Dion's boat landing a few.

We decided to anchor as the drift was fast and not overly productive. Liam lost a few baits but Dion's boat started to clean up! They proceeded to land some nice nannygai, trevally and assorted fish. All reef fin fish of course where released. We were trying to catch some mackerel for the annual seafood night for the Church club.

At this point there were no fish for fly but then as all seemed lost Dion started to land a couple of nice size doggy mackerels. With this came a hard hit on fly and after a fairly heavy battle a nice 10kg tuna was landed. I think the fish still won as the fly rod was now three piece instead of 2!! nice fish but we need to work on landing these suckers! Anyway after some deliberation and soul searching I pulled out the spin stick to see if there were any doggies left by Dion. I decided to drop the metal lure beside the boat and watched the lure go down with the sounder. As it neared the bottom I noticed an arch appear below it. So a couple of cranks and fish on! A nice use of the sounder (very lucky!!) After a bit of a slow start a nice finish to the day. We will not mention the landing net that went for a swim and Liam's fly shirt decided to go with it! Well done to Dion and crew they looked like they had a great day and all reef fin fish were returned to the water.