Another year has come and gone and the hope for glassy weather was soon evaporated in the week leading up to the trip with absolute rubbish forecast for as long as we could see. The previous two July school holidays were also windy and proved to be hard work. In the lead up to this years trip, we all commented 'surely we cant have 3 years in a row of shit weather..' how wrong we were. Over the course of the two weeks, the wind dropped under 10 knots for two days, with the majority of days being in the 18-24kn range. 

Undeterred and with the view of the fish arent going to catch themselves, we ventured out most days into the unhappy sea with at times more white water then not and the tops being blown off passing lumps of water. We were drifting over 1kn most days and had to up the amount of lead to hold bottom. 
We spent the majority of our time out in the 120-140s chasing goldband. We did well on the reds earlier in the year at a different location so we were all keen to hunt golds. Most days we seemed to get our bag, and return to the ramp late in the afternoon. 

We had a young fella on board most days who didnt fish much due to the depth but the smile on his face was priceless. When i was younger, a mate of my old man used to take me out fishing in coral bay and i still hold onto those memories dearly so its cool to pass on some memories to another young guy who will be driving our boat in the years to come no doubt

Swell was barely there most of our trip which was nice as that on top of the rank weather would have kept us ashore a few more days. 
We didnt have too much of an issue with sharks which was nice but they did pop up a few times. 
My uncle hooked (on consecutive days) a 6-7ft whaler shark in the side fin and dragged it up sideways from 140m...possibly the funniest thing we have seen in a while but the poor fella was sore in the days after. 

Interestingly enough we hooked a small green jobfish on the troll one afternoon which i havet seen too many being caught on line.

Nice to see lots of the same crew getting about up there and the trip was topped off nicely with a QLD win in game 3 of the origin. 

Was nice to get through this year unscathed as last year i sliced all 3 tendons in my finger and most of the nerves were damaged requiring a quick dash back to the city for micro surgery. Not having to deal with that was great this year...however i did have a few strangers come up to me and hang shit on me for doing it last year which i laughed at.

We stopped through the Galena Bridge camp at Murchison on the way home with what seemed like half of coral bay.

Only 11months until we are back there

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