Fraser Isl yak fishing expedition 2012

Its that time of year again for the annual Fraser Island kayak fishing expedition, which myself and a handful of cohorts are embarking on this weekend. As per usual we'll be launching from Hervey Bay, sailing over to Fraser isl and then heading north east towards Wathumba creek. Our intention is to reach this destination in a single sitting (50+km) in an effort to give ourselves more time to fish Platypus Bay, which has been the epicenter of numerous extremely positive fishing reports of late. 

Like last year we'll be base-camping around Wathumba for a week and heading out into the bay to fish each day. target species include golden trevally, tunas (longtail and mack), mackerels (spotty and spanish) and we're also going to put in a fair effort to catch some black marlin, which have also made a showing in the area of late. No doubt some of us will be heading upstream into the creek to hunt down those elusive mangrove jacks as well. I won't be terribly well prepared for estuary fishing (so I may give that a miss) but this year I am going to be very well prepared for open water pelagics. 

To make best use of my respectable assortment of Rapala bibbed lures, Williamson skirts and jigs, Storm plastics, I'm using 3 heavy duty reels: Okuma Salina 2 (1x 5000HS, 1 x 10000ST) and Salina 3 in the 16000 size. The lightest reel will couple my Nitro Viper (used exclusively for casting at surface activity), and I'll be fitting the other reels to Nitro Godzillas for duel rod trolling action. More so than any other year, I'm supremely confident of putting them all to good use. 

We have doubled our group size upon last year, from 3 to 6 adventurers. Its great to see Paulo back in the line up and we're also joined by Shep and Rhett, both of whom have been following my previous expeditions very closely. It's going to be interesting to see how extra numbers turns out, as it's already resulted in a lot more planning and preparation orientated email conversations. Both Rhett and Shep are relative newbies to the kayak fishing expedition game but with any luck we've prepared them well enough.

This year I plan to shoot much more footage than previous years, as well as take more photos. Although I'll actually have one less mounted camera on board than my previous few expeditions, I have more memory and back up power sources at my disposal this time around. Because there is going to be six of us - all of whom will be using mounted cams - it's quite likely that a lot more action will be caught on video. Instead of just using footage from my own cams, this year I am hoping to use footage from everyone's cams. If it turns out the way I hope, this will result in the amassing of enough media to go forth and complete my long planned kayak fishing doco, Paddlefield. 

• < Prev:The next chapter
• Next:Fish Down Under Magazine #4 >