As with most travelling anglers, I've got one of those internal 'bucket lists' that I keep adding trips to faster than I can complete them. Whilst the list keeps growing, there are a few trips that have been right up the top of that list for a while now. The kind of destination that you dream about long before you get there, and Ashmore Reef was one such destination.

Ashmore is an extremely remote reef system near the border between the waters of Australia and Papua New Guinea. In short, it's a real prick to get to (in total 8 flights and some sea voyaging for me). But as is often the case, these hard to get to places are renown for great fishing – and so as soon as I read the report about the first trip which Nomad did to Ashmore some time ago, I decided it was somewhere I needed to go!

A couple of years went by before I locked the trip in - but over a number of beers in London one night my mate Tim Howe agreed to join me on the mission, and the trip got booked.

After my fourth (and Tim's fifth) flight of the trip thus far, we finally caught our first glance of the mothership Odyssey which was to be our home for the next week.

As we sat around on Horn Island waiting to board, it is safe to say the anticipation was pretty damn high.

As anyone who has read my previous reports may know, I have a reputation of getting atrocious weather on almost every trip I attend. 20-30 knots seems to be par for the course. So it was with some skepticism (and relief) that the Nomad guides assured us we were in for some glamour weather on our trip, which thankfully proved to be the case. After a quick beer, the tackle prep began, and we steamed out overnight to where the games would commence.

I had two main goals for this trip – beat my PB dog (which sits at 50 odd kg) and bag a Napoleon Wrasse on the casting gear. On day 1 of the trip, we set off to try and accomplish the first of those challenges. We were to start the day by jigging some steep drop-offs in quite deep water, and from the get go things looked promising. Plenty of bait on the sounder, and some large marks down there too – so our hopes were high. We lined up for our first drift, and straight away it was on. Triple hookup on BIG fish, at least two of which were doggies. As we looked at each other we knew that there was no chance all three of these beasts would get landed – and as we watched the line rapidly peel off our spools under sunset drag, it became a matter of who would lose their's first.

Unfortunately we didn't have to wait long to find out. Quite simply we got our asses handed to us. We had one fish reef us, another get sharked, and a third one get lost to line digging into the spool under immense drag – all within seconds of the fight beginning. I'd like to say that this was an isolated incident – but truth be told, this was to be the status quo every time we dropped a jig in deep water for the rest of the trip. We spent a good chunk of the morning doing everything we could to get one of these monsters to the top, hoping that by sheer luck we would get past the sharks or keep the dogs away from the reef long enough to land one – but it just wasn't to be the case. I lost count of how many hookups we had, but after a while it became time to pack it up and do something else. Strong though the lure of landing a monster doggie is, it is something that's easy to get disillusioned with, as in the pursuit of it you find yourself in countless situations where you can do absolutely nothing to beat the sharks or the reef other than hope you 'get lucky' and finally get one up.

 We saw massive Yellowfin bustups all around which may have been a contributing to the shark factor. Every cast into those messes of tuna and bait resulted in an immediate hookup of a large tuna, followed by an equally immediate pack mauling of that tuna by hordes of oceanic whitetips. We swiftly realized that any lure you put into those bustups would never be seen again, and decided to move on.

As we skulked off to lick our wounds (with jig bags and lure rolls worryingly depleted for being one day into the trip) we decided to head off for a cast on the reef and leave the deeper water alone for a bit. Thankfully this was the right call!

What followed was a consistent (if not wide open) bite on GTs, coral trout and the other usual suspects. A number of nice Geets landed, so a fun finish to what had so far been a painful day. The Amberjack lures getting a lot of love in that afternoon session – the Dreadnought and the Spitfire in particular.

During our stint on Odyssey, we also fished every night off the mothership. There were fish landed every night, but two sessions stood out. The session on night one, was made possible by the fact that we anchored out at a very deep mark near a dropoff that we'd fished earlier in the day. I have to say, that I never thought I'd experience fishing like that off a mothership at anchor! During a session that would have lasted around 90 minutes, we had over a dozen hookups on F*CKING BIG dogs. The difference here versus the day, is that astonishingly the sharks were far better at night. The result was no different though. Drag 'done up with a crescent' and two thumbs on spool using PE8 would do nothing to stop these monsters.

There was one occasion that I thought I was in with a real shot as I hooked the fish quite close to the top whilst retrieving my jig, but it still smashed me. A run of at least 150m without slowing at all – ending in a collision with a reef. Reels too hot to touch and broken dreams were the order of the night, but there was something pretty surreal about getting dominated by an XOS dog and then being able to go and pull a beer from the keg on the mothership whilst you were re-rigging. A night I won't forget.

Day 2, and the plan for our tender was to hit Boot Reef first up for a cast. Second cast in and BAM – great strike from a GT on my rod. Mid fight, and it happened. The bastard sharks turned up again. It isn't often that you have a size GT sharked – but the greysuits were on form. Couple casts later and I hooked up another rat GT, same result, so we decided to move on.

After persevering through some bycatch on the casting gear we went back out to the deeper marks for a jig, but had exactly the same results as day one. Reefings from dogs on the jig, sharkings on the tuna while casting, really a lose lose scenario for all bar the tackle manufacturers.

We decided to move away from the more usual jig/pop targets, and focus more on inside edges and channels chasing the Napoleon Wrasse I wanted so badly. After releasing a few odds and sods (the usual trout etc) my FCL Labo CSP got swiped off the surface by something very large that was very keen to get back into the reef. The thing hit in under 5m of water near the edge of a large dropoff. As we were targeting wrasse, I'd been warned to run 'no mercy' drag, and so I had my Stella cranked up to less than a turn off locked down. After a lot of back and forth (and a marginally avoided unintentional swim) I finally managed to get him away into the deeper water. The victory was mine! But the fish had other ideas, and summoned the strength for one last surge for the reef which no amount of spool grabbing could prevent. He found his hole, and gained both his freedom and my lure. Our guide reaffirming our suspicions – that I'd been 'wrassed' by a sized specimen fish. Devastated is putting it lightly!

So we carried on working the reef edge (as I continued to slowly die inside) with the hope of another shot at our prey. We were casting into every likely looking bit of structure – hitting the channels – when Tim (also working an FCL Labo stickbait but this time in the form of a TBO) got tight. Having seen what just happened to me, he was giving it no quarter in a locked drag tug of war that got the fish away from the reef and kept it there. As we pulled back into deeper water, the battle was won (for real this time) and Tim had opened his Wrasse account. A cracking fish.

After we ran out of reef edge to try we went out to try and hit another point that our guide Jimmy had fished before. At first things were slow, but as the current began to push up the bite switched on, and we encountered an awesome bustup of fish smashing bait in shallow water. This bustup included all kinds of fish including GTs, red bass, and (a new species for both Tim and I) the Maori Sea Perch - with Tim landing this awesome specimen.

Day 3

Today was our last session out at Boot, and the plan was a full day of casting. Jigging kit was left behind, and we headed straight for the spot where we'd found the Geets the previous morning. As luck would have it, they were just as easy to find this day. Lots of sharks around again but I landed my GT of the trip at this spot, with Englishman Alex losing another very nice fish (and a Carpenter with it) right at the boat.

The biggest GT I landed at this spot got followed by sharks on the way in, but he was too big for them to charge in without caution, and he ended up swimming around just under the boat for a full ten minutes after he was released – regaining his strength, for his run back to the reef. I've never seen this happen before, but he was at most 30cm under the surface of the water this whole time, whilst the sharks circled a little farther away.  This was a really hot session for a while with almost a fish a cast of GTs, as well as some very big and angry dogs which (on a number of days) followed our lures right up to the boat, but could not be tempted to commit.

After this we went to give the 'wrasse spot' another go, but no luck, so we popped inside a huge blue hole and had a very hot light tackle session on Jobfish, Maori Sea Perch, Red Bass and Coral Trout on stickbaits. The Sea Perch was a first for me – and had me all but defeated (by burying me in a hole) until by luck slackening the line had him come out again while I still had some semblance of a leader left.

Our time for the day was up so we retired to the boat and after another great meal, commenced the nightly mothership jigging ritual. Little did we know, this was to be the second of our noteworthy mothership sessions. In what the captain described as 'the best mothership fishing he'd seen in his time at Nomad' we hooked dog after dog after dog. Most of these however were of a much more manageable size (around the 5-12kg range) and we were fighting them on increasingly lighter gear. Towards the end we had double and triple hookups going, fighting them on super light gear. I had a number of them up on a Temple Reef Mytho LJ510 rod running PE2 line on a tiny Wiki Jigging 900 reel. Seriously awesome fun running around the boat, dunking your rod deep into the water trying to keep line away from the boat and generally having a good laugh. No trophy fish landed of course, but everyone including the crew got in on the action. We must have landed well over 20 rat doggies in this session – certainly one to remember.

The fourth day was a quieter one for us. We started fishing around Ashmore but nothing much was happening in the morning. The wind was forecast to pick up, so we had to leave Ashmore and head into the hard line. Once we got to the reef, things started looking way better. Unbelievable amounts of bait around, but lots of sharks again. We landed loads of small to medium GTs, plus a few makkies (Spanish and Shark Mack) as well as plenty of the usual bycatch in particular Red Bass.

Day five was a much more prolific day. We started out on the jig and whilst it took us a good while to find the ground – when we did things fired up and became (in terms of fish actually landed rather than hooked and lost) our best day on the jig. Included in this jigging action was a double hookup of a doggie and grouper to Alex and Tim – as well as plenty of Spaniards on the jig to keep us entertained. I was testing out some prototype Cerulean jigs that proved to be very productive and one of them (in 150gr) hooked up one hell of a dog, which unfortunately won its freedom after I thought I'd finally turned its head.

After half a day of jigging it was time for a cast, and straight away we knew it was going to be a good session. The average size of fish was small, but it was non-stop action on Spanish macks, random reef dwellers and around 35 GTs landed. No real trophy fish there, but a great deal of fun.

On our way back to the boat we came across a tiny sand cay in the middle of nowhere, so we stopped in for a look. I decided to spend a bit of time on the camera while Tim & Alex got in some casts from the shore. Plenty of GTs around! A couple of missed opportunities and a few follows, but none landed unfortunately. Would have been nice to get some landbased Geets that's for sure, and the spot was incredible.

For our final day – we decided once again to leave the jigs at home, and focus on the cast. The main aim was to get me my Napoleon. To cut a long story short, it was a failure. We spent half the day casting at likely structure and whilst a massive hole did open up behind my lure in around 4 metres of water (which our guide called for a wrasse) in the first hour of fishing, the rest of the time was very uneventful aside from a little cod on PE3.

It was shaping up to be a dud of a final day, until we stumbled across one of the GT spawning aggregations (or mobile bommies) we'd heard so much about. Then things changed drastically for the better!

After we'd pulled a few of the fish up we knew the average size was small, so I decided it would be a good idea to drop down to my PE3 gear and flick a lure out. What ensued was one incredibly fun session, with Tim and I having multiple battles against large numbers of Geets and Macks, all on the lightest casting kit we had on board. Despite loads of wince-worthy rod angles being performed as GTs dived around under the boats, plenty of deck dancing and boat maneuvering ensured that we each got fish up – and the Yamaga Blanks Blue Snipers we were using (77/3 and 81/2) didn't miss a beat, with Tim taking out the PE3 battle. Surely one of my favourite rod series of all time.

After a couple of hours of great fun the bite dried up and I thought the trip was done, but we had time for one more spot. We found a likely looking shoal and flicked our lures, and I immediately hooked up to something that unequivocally kicked my ass. Straight back to his hole in the reef and my lure was gone. OK – there were some serious fish down there, time to break out the heavier rod. It didn't take long until I was on again – this fish had some serious power from the get go – I could tell it was a reef dweller, but couldn't pick the species – going too hard for a red bass – maybe a donkey trout, who knows, but what I didn't expect (and was delighted to see) was another 'first' for me in the form of a Chinaman. I'd actually remarked to Tim a couple of days earlier whilst looking at a photo of one in the dining room on Odyssey that one of those had been on my list for some time, so it was great to tick one off on the last cast on the last day.

With the fish released, it was time for our last steam back to the mothership. Beers were cracked, stories were told, and the long voyage back to reality began. Counting down to the next one….

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