End of Season

Our final charter has finished today.

As you can imagine as much as I love my fishing this year has been very busy and I am looking forward to the break.

This week was great fun and some fabulous fishing.

We found quite a few Manta ray's and some had a few cobia and goldies with them.

The early rain started the jelly prawn hatch and most of the beaches had quite a few jelly prawns which really gets the action hotted up.

Lots of tarpon, goldies, giant herring, blue salmon and small queenies creating good fly fishing on the beaches and flats.

Duane has decided to leave us with some trepidation, and has joined the Rio Tinto workforce as a shift fitter. Duane has been with me since 2000 and has been an integral part of the business, and as some of you are aware a great fishing guide.

He will be doing some cameo appearances during next season, doing some part time guiding with us on his day's off.

FF&S wish Duane the very best in his new job.

It looks like we are going to have a good wet with the rain that we have already had and that should give the fishing a great kick start for the next season.

By the way we still have a vacancy in April and have had a cancellation late June which is prime time, so if you might be interested get onto us soon.

Those groups that haven't paid their deposits for their 2008 bookings please do so to secure your trip!

Almost there!

Well, end of season is almost there!
Oct was perhaps not our best fishing month, although there was some great highlights.
One day travelling along the beach and one of the clients said have a look at that big shark!
I said that isn't a shark, it's a marlin!
We tied lure on and trolled it past the 500lb fish. He immediately crashed the lure and hooked up.
The marlin took a long run then put his head out of the water thrashing back and forth. It then swam back toward the boat and swam under the boat and out the other side. He again put his head out and thrashed throwing the lure into the air.
A short but very exciting experience, for the angler, and on a 30lb spin outfit I think slightly undergunned.
This whole episode happened about 800m from the beach just outside the harbour, and in 14ft of water.
This was not just an isolated incident either during Oct/Nov we seen quite a few billfish which is encouraging as we wern't fishing for them.

On the 5th Nov I had a client ( Nick and Roz Durrant)and his wife fishing with small metal slugs. Both of them were on a double hookup whenroz's tuna was smashed by something we didn't actually identify, but dissapeared in a flurry of whitewater.
I released the other tuna and told Roz it is probably a shark just break it off!
She tried but couldnt break the 30lb Fins braid on the very light Sage spin rod.
She gave me the rod to break it off.
I held the spool waiting for the slow constant pressure to break the line when to everyones surprise a marlin slowly launched itself from the water 20m from the boat.
I quickly gave Roz back the rod, who was still, like all of us, in a state of shock and awe.
The marlin was around 200lb and gave us a fantastic show as it jumped and jumped with some spectacular airobatics finally after an hour losing it next to the boat when the line eventually chafed through.
I don't know how it managed to get hooked on such a small treble and stay hooked with a 4ft 45lb schneider leader?
But it did and made one angler very happy!
We also hooked some memorable fish jigging soft plastics over the reefs.
The fishing in general has been great over the past couple of weeks although the sharks are still a real problem.

One more charter to go before finishing for the year, and I am really looking forward to a break even though I am sure it will be a wet one.
Sorry no images today as I can't seem to upload them?
I will post some images ASAP