Andrew_P

Your trailers look good Luke.

A few tips from me:

• Navionics is a great resource for new areas. Nothing beats going to a new area and working it out for yourself
• Try searching this forum - most of the topics are SE Qld specific but there are a few of us further north that have posted trip reports from Yeppoon and Airlie Beach areas. Having fished both these areas myself i can tell you that you still have to work hard for your fish. Weather and sharks can be a problem.
• There are a load of youtubers based around the Whitsundays - try contacting them for a few tips.

Andrew

To top it off 

Oh yeah. Did I mention it was cold?

I haven’t fished much lately but around 3 months ago I picked some dates to go see my mate in Newcastle. It was a fluke that the weather came good and we managed to get out for 3 sessions in the 2 days I was down. The first session resulted in only bonito, heaps of bait on the reef and signs of fish but nothing on bait or plastics. We aimed to fish hard the next session and were rewarded with a 20min bite which produced 5 legal fish including 2 x 70s for my mate and a modest 50+ for me. Legal size in NSW is a laughable 30cm but my mate won’t keep anything under 35cm so we threw a few back. 
Hopes were high for the next session and we woke to 10-15knots of NW which was fishable but not fun. We got out to the reef about 20 mins before sun up and found big arches up high hassling the plentiful bait schools. I cast my line in front of the drift and let it sink. When it hadn’t hit the bottom I started winding and felt a few light headshakes of what I called for another bonito. As I kept winding the suspected bonito attached grew in weight and took a scorching run with excess power and I started getting nervous. This was a real one and was trying to get back to the bottom quick smart. After a bit of a battle I saw some colour surfacing and was confirmed to be a big snapper! I swung him into the net and gave out a hoot - this was the one I had come for.
My mate caught another legal fish and the bite completely shut down after the sun popped over the horizon. So in 3 days we fished for >12 hours and had caught and kept 7 fish in a total 30 min bite window. Madness!

Fresh off the drier is a Snyder Glas blank I salvaged from a local rod builder. At 7’6 it is likely an FMT90 but with no model number on the butt one can’t be positive. I built it for a mate to chase reefies in the bay with a baitrunner 4500b and 6kg mono. He chose the pink and white colour scheme and I added the grey to match the grips and blank but didn’t realise it shared its colour scheme with Alf Stewart’s favourite bird. Early bird gets the bay reefies I guess!

Finished the kingy rod for my mate Ash. He’s in Newcastle so it’s coming into kingfish time for him. This rod will primarily fish livies and chuck stickbaits if required. Matched to a Saragosa 10k and 50lb braid. 
 

I estimate I spent 10 hours on this rod. I can usually whack them out in 3-4 but this took a bit extra - double over wrapped guides, marbling, chevron wrap. 4 coats of epoxy. Hopefully he won’t need another one!

In the words of Jimmy Carr:

”Venison’s dear, isn’t it?”

I think it was a mould he is holding. We got the head after it had been with the  mould dude for more than 12 months!

So big it almost looks fake !

Ed Falconer from Keely Rose charters caught this monster red during covid. He donated it to our lab for estimating its age and I was one of the scientists that counted the rings. At 33 years it’s not the oldest red we have seen (43 year old female is) but definitely the biggest!

Ed’s red

Painted sweetlip, Diagramma pictum

Nice work @Sylvathorn! It takes a certain type of person to rescue rods in that condition!

Restorations and rebuilds are like renovations - you pay to pull it apart and to put it back together!

Give me a new blank and guides any day. 

I don’t know the proper name but the brown thing is called a kelpy 

The other is a fringe fin trevally