CHRISTMAS PARTY and FISHING

1st The Fishing

On the Morning before the Party, a couple of boats went out in the Harour to get some fresh fish for extra's at the Party. The weather was HOT, with glassy seas and in most spots clear water.

 Lord Jim fished around Indian Island, though when we asked him the location, he supplied coordinates for somewhere in the Sahara Desert. (Must have been a secret spot??)  But he was spied around the flats on Indian, and was almost stuck a few time by the looks of the mud on bottom of his boat and motors.   His Lordship, forgot his camera so there is no shots of his fish, but he brought back some beauties, Barra, Threadies and Queenies.  He said that the water was crystal clear on the flats and would have seen over three hundred barra, in schools around the island.  But they were flighty and skittish.

The White Boat (Jon and Jack White) did extra well too.  Both of them got their PB's on Barra. They were fishing around Vigilant and Knife Island.   In Vigilant, there were salmon everywhere on the jellies, but hooking them up was another matter.  While they were trying to hook the salmon they got their barra from out of the same water.  I'm not sure of the sizes,  but they were beauties, and Jack had his cut up and served to the mob, rather than take it home.  Thanks mate!.

Jack with his Barra.

Jon (Dad) with another great barra

Now you may have read in this blog, that there appears to be a bit of sledging between the WW flies and the Rodgy Doggie flies.  So Rodgy (trying to outdo WW) gave young Jack some of his special, bird fur flies to try the next day.  I'm not sure if they were used on these two fish, but he got into more great fish on Sunday on the 1.5m lows.

According to Rodgy all these were caught on his flies (probably not, but it keeps the feud going)

Pete O and Rodgy went out in the Orange Marauder.  They were surrounded by threadies in Vigilant but couldn't get one to hook up. (Should have used one of Waynes WW flies?)  They did get heaps of  small trevors and queenies, like all the other boats when they were around Knife Island, apparently there were schools breaking up everywhere.  DNA flies seemed to be the secret there.  After that they went down into the Charlotte  just as the tide turned.  There were salmon chasing jellies down there, a heap of small barra, that did not seem interested, but the best fishing they had was on tarpon.  The tarpon were just off the edge of the dirty water rolling on bait.  Apparently there were some really big fish amongst them.   They came in early because it was so hot, they said they both lost about 20 kg in the sun as the heat melted them.

Pete O with one of the Tarpon.

2nd The Party

Well, one thing for sure, no one went hungry, with all the food that Sand Palms put on, plus cooking up the fish that the boys caught, at the end of the day, there were still, prawns, oysters, ham, meatballs, fish pieces and salad left overs.  Then to top that off, Justine brought out trays of her rum balls for desert.  I heard Rodgy and Martin complaining that they couldn't drink anymore because they were too full.  (I think they got over that though).   It was fantastic and again we cannot thank everyone enough.

We ran a raffle with prizes donated by Barb & Pete O, Crusty, Lord Jim, and Rodgy, plus a nights accomodation from Sandpalms.   All the proceeds of that raffle was donated to Careflight.

Our wonderful hostess, Julie.

We also had a lucky door prize, won by Crusty...

Crusty with his 'Lucky door' including a 'redback'.

THE MOB