FISH & BOAT, February 2019- P13 Fishing From previous page past the 30-metre mark. With plenty of red in the The best way to start the Suzuki into hyper drive when I glimpsed at the side boat, some truly satisfied day pulling up reds as the imager to see a dark shadow some 30 metres from our anglers, and no desire to sun comes up. position. We cruised over for a reccy to find two masfeed the sharks below, I The two wonky - sive wonky holes side by side about 10 metres, and pointed the TABS back holes which held both were flowing hard with plenty of bait. A quick towards the rainforest some trophy reds. pass over the area showed some big red arches which filled hills of the Dain- spelt one thing – big reds! tree. Whilst we had out- The pass over showed us another point on the down smarted the westerly this scan worth noting. The bottom was littered with trip, I know for sure it will rubble and rock which can be killers when trying to be back to take revenge all drag big reds out of shallow water. Whilst saddle tailsummer long- a challenge snapper aren’t renowned for fighting dirty and bust worth accepting. - ing you on the bottom, in this shallow country they can be much angrier and will head to the bottom of What you want to see on the Humminbird the wonky very quickly making short work of your Mega- plenty of structure, plenty of bait braid. With this in mind, we loaded for bear getting and big arches harassing it. out the 50lb Sunline Siglon loaded overheads know- ing full well the calibre of fish that live in these spots. Using the Minn Kota Terrova, we spot locked with precision right between the two holes to hedge our bets. I can’t even begin to explain how awesome it is to be able to spot lock using the Minn Kota when doing this type of fishing. Having the ability to accu- rately position the boat and fishing lines within a few centimetres over such small spots without disturbing the bottom with a clunky anchor makes a huge dif- ference especially in such shallow water. In a matter of seconds, the jigs and baits hit the bottom, and the sound of groans coming from both sides of the boat began. Both deckies were hung over the gunnels hard with the Sunline peeling off their reels with bent rods almost at breaking point. I was about to tell them to harden up and stop fighting like a 40-year-old An- thony Mundine when my rig was almost ripped out of my hands by something very large and very hungry. I somehow managed to get two winds on the Saltiga 2 speed which got the fish off the bottom, but I soon found myself red-faced and struggling to stay off the canvas as well. We were all connected to big red freight trains and short pumps of the rods soon had three 90cm saddle tail snappers lying boat side. Af- ter catching our breath, we quickly went down again and in minutes its was Deja Vue with the rods loaded again with three busted anglers trying to keep three trophy reds out of the rubble below. There is no doubt that going hard on these fish makes them fight harder but going all out big angry fish style to me is just as appealing as a long battle on light gear. The end result was 2 to the fishermen and 1 to the fish, with Ian los- ing a monster fish to the bottom of the hole. This shut the spot down and we were left to begin our search for the fish again. The next spots added several loner reds here and there until the call was made to venture a little deeper on the other side of the shipping chan- nel to a lone rock a couple of kilometres just off the reef. We stowed the rods as we had to travel through the green zone and worked our way towards the spot. Closer to the reef, isolated structured popped up on the sounder and we were very disheartened to see a lack of bait anywhere. The chatter on the radio was all about the lack of bait to be found and the tough west- erly bite was proving to be very real for those deep in the reef. Moving closer to the mark, the Humminbird more Mega showed a steady rise on the bottom and as I moved to the pressure face of the rising bombie, it lit room, up like a Christmas tree with a big ball of bait and a mob of big arches surrounding it. We positioned the boat with the Minn Kota and dropped our lines on the feeding frenzy below. According to the sounder, the fish were at the 80-metre mark so using the colour less squeeze. code on the Siglon braid we were able to get our jigs and baits right amongst the feeding frenzy. We were quickly into them with a string of mid ranger nannys coming over the side thick and fast. After a crazy 15-minute session the dreaded tax men moved in making it impossible to get anything The author with another cracking More room, more features, more stability.and transoms (depending on the model). 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