[Previous entry: "East Coast Safari (cont.) ..... Nine Mile Reef"] [Next entry: "EAST COAST SAFARI ..... First day at Cook Island"]
06/10/2006: "EAST COAST SAFARI ..... First big fish encounter"
17 August Ron Cox arrived at our tent about 7am today. The going over the sand bar was easy today. We anchored at Mary’s Rock at Cook Island. Ron Cox and his mate werelung diving (scuba diving) for crays on the southern side. Vis was 60 feet or better with warm water and a cloudless sky above.
There were so many species of fish it is difficult to mention them all. The main one’s being: red mowies, bream, tarwhine, small turrum, two types of makerel, blue and brown groper, parrot fish, cod, black drummer.
Snowie knocked over three blues all about 20 pounds each, a nice parrot fish about 10 pounds, three tarwhine up to three pounds each, two Spanish mackerel and other stuff.
I got half a dozen mowies and then spent the next hour getting some Spanish lobster out of a cave in 30 – 35 feet of water near Mary’s Rock.
We took a couple of photo’s I in the boat and then took our catch back to the Porpoise Pool. We sold our 75 pounds of cleaned fish for 1/6 pence per pound to Ron Cox and sold 5 of the 7 lobsters for 4/6 per pound.
Coxie bought a Balmain Bug that was still alive and placed it in an aquarium.
In all we made seven pounds for the morning.
Tomorrow we look at Nine Mile Reef. Snowie is keen to get himself a big cod.
Ron and Valerie have returned from Sydney. Valerie cooked us a terrific tea tonight. Fried Spanish mackerel, chips and asparagus.
18 August We found Nine Mile Reef without too much trouble. The was a rip running from north to south about two knots, maximum swimming speed about three knots so it was hard spear fishing.
We were diving over a ledge about 60 feet down and most fish were on the sand out of the current.
Ron Taylor shot a nice Samson fish about 50 pounds. Snowie got a kingie about 30 pounds and at one time I was surrounded by a school of kingies all between 30-40 pounds each. I hit one and he took off with the rig (75 feet of ski line with a small yellow buoy attached). We lost him when he was almost in the boat. So much for the single flopper on the spear.
I dived on a large Queensland groper which was on the sand. He turned around and looked at me as I came down. I fired but missed the spine and he took off. I passed my little yellow buoy about halfway back to the surface. It disappeared with 75 feet of nylon rope into deeper water.
I swam back to the boat. Finally we managed to get a rope abound the buoy and slowly tried to pull the cod out of the ledge he was under, the spear bent and the flopper (single) tore off. (above picture)
We speared a couple of nice sawtail each and then shot back to Cook Island where some underwater shots were taken by Ron and I.
Had a bit of a fish here for mowies etc and then went and cleaned our fish and took them up to the Porpoise Pool. We got about 100 pound of cleaned fish.
19 August Everyone was keen again today to get out to Nine Mile Reef and see what was doing.
Out to Nine Mile we went. The sea was nice and calm with no wind. But as there wasn’t any rip the water was too dirty to spear fish so deep. So we tried another place. Didn’t do any good at all there. Three sawtail weighing a total of 16 pounds.
We tried to find Five Mile Reef but it was too dirty to fish there anyway, same at Fido Reef. We shot back to the reef off Kirra Beach. Water here was utterly filthy so we decided to forget the whole idea.
Sold our fish to a fish shop for sixteen shillings which wasn’t too bad.
Spent the rest of the afternoon doing odd things, that is drawing dough out of the bank etc. Tomorrow we go to Point Lookout in search of big fish and cleaner water.
