The call was made late last week that Monday was looking promising for a fish out wide off of Ocean Reef. Target species Greyband Cod.

It’s a fair way to travel so we don’t venture out there that often, but when the effort is made, rewards are generally received.

Call for additional crew was met with silence so it was just the two of us heading out.

Launched at ocean reef and headed West. Easterly was still puffing about 15kts so it made for an average trip out at about 22kts. Have definitely been out in worse tho!

Lined up the first bit of ground and some blips on the sounder gave us some glimmer of hope. Put the electric reel back on the rod, (this time the right way up!), rigged up, and bombs away.

First drop we were both on to some little fish with a red snapper first fish in the boat, slowly followed by another. Slowly because I realised that when I put the reel back on the rod, I hadn’t put the line through the level wind and could only get 2 of the 3 hundred metres of line back on with the last 100 metres pulled by hand!! 2nd error for the day out the way!.

The wind was dropping but we were still drifting a little quick which we thought may have been the problem – snapper are willing to chase the bait whereas the cod seem to be pretty lazy hunters.
Anyway, the next couple of hours were pretty much the same with hook-ups of red snapper and pink snapper on every drop and we probably boated 20+ fish. The snapper all seem to handle the rise from 200+ metres really well and go back fighting!

Going that way for four snapper isn’t really worth it and we were holding out for some Greyband. The backup plan was to pulls stumps out wide and hit Direction bank on the way back in for some Dhu’s etc.

About 11, the wind dropped right off so we decided to have a last drop on the ground we started on before trying in close – good decision.

Lined up the mark again and the sounder lit up. A couple of minutes in the drift and we loaded up with a better fish- Definitely a cod and the long wind to the top commenced.

As soon as it surfaced, there was a sigh of relief that we had one in the bucket and our reputation would be retained.

2nd drift and bang, one cod on and then followed by another Big hookup. The Second hookup was dropped pretty quickly, only to hookup again with a smaller model (for a cod) within about 10 seconds! and we were both on again. Both fish reached the surface about the same time and the models were just getting bigger!

Another drift just to complete the bag and I took a hook off (as they don’t release well at all and didn’t want to get a double header!) and stacked the bottom 10/0 hook with a mix of Occy and whiting – probably lasted about 10 seconds on the bottom before the rod loaded up big time again – this was a big boy for sure and it was pulling the boat back towards the fish!

Don’t think the other rod and rig even made it to the bottom before having to wind up again (as we couldn’t catch any more fish anyway) and about 15 minutes later, up pops the big boy about 40 metres out from the boat- they hit the surface like a submarine when they are that big.

This completed the bag of four greyband so we cruised on back to the marina at a leisurely 30+kts.

Not a bad Monday at all.

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