Tough day out to the Vernon Islands

A plan was hastily made on Friday morning to fish the Vernon Islands. I had never been there, but had of course heard great things about the area. The boat was packed and gear checked and double checked on Friday night.

I was up at sparrow's Saturday and picked up Tony around 5:30 AM. The road to Leaders Creek wasn't as bad as some may have you believe, I was able to comfortably tow the boat at 80km/h for most of it. 

It was a beautiful morning, we'd launched by around 7:00AM and were on our way. Outside the mouth of Leaders Creek and there was barley any wind at all, the sea was calm, but the current was roaring along between the south and north islands. We spotted some frigates and petrels, under the birds we found a fast moving current line with upwellings and a back-eddy. Along that line bait fish were being rounded up and taken by some big mackerel. It felt like a really promising start to a great day. Tony hooked up first. Initially we'd thought mackerel, but it wasn't fighting like a mac. 

Tony saw his backing a few times

We followed this fish around for a while. It took at least 20 minutes and perhaps half and hour before we saw Tony's leader again. Somehow out of a school of mackerel and tuna Tony had managed to catch a GT.

The uneducated GT hadn't realised that was a mackerel fly!

Quite a nice fish on a 10wt.

We'd lost ground on the back-eddy and baitfish during the fight. Once we were back with them we got plenty of refusals from mackerel. I had a fly dead drifting in the water while I was mucking around trying to program the electric to keep up with the current. I started to strip in for another cast when the fly got taken and taken pretty had too. There were some big head shakes and a powerful determined run deep into the channel that saw me into the backing quickly too. Wow, I thought I was onto my first GT and I probably was, but I'll never really know. About ten minutes into the fight and after a big shake the weight was gone. I retrieved the line to find the knot had failed at the fly! By now tide had reached the top of the high and we couldn't find the bait fish again.

We pulled a number of small reefies off the fringing reef of North East Vernon Islands and watched the odd big mackerel swim past outside of casting distance. Then the wind picked up! We tried using the electric to anchor along a current line that the birds were working between the two islands but even with 80lb of thrust we were slowing losing ground. Then somehow the electric motor threw its prop, somewhere in 40m of water. No electric certainly made the rest of the day interesting.

Near the bottom the low, great structure but no fish!

In an effort to get out of the wind we tried the southern side of South Vernon Island. There was great structure and water flowing off the reef in small waterfalls. The wind and no electric made position the boat tricky but worse there were just no fish. Eventually we threw the reef anchor onto some rocks and held a position hoping to ambush whatever came past. Again we got refusals from mackerel. Thankfully with more luck than skill I managed a single queenfish who oddly enough appeared to have no mates.

A long way to go for a small queenie.

By mid afternoon the wind was well above forecast and against the tide. It made for a long, slow, wet run back to leaders creek. Once there we had a few casts for barra. Something hit and circled my fly for a second hit. I missed the strike both times. It might have been a barra, but I told Tony and myself that it was just a really big archer fish.

It was the worth the time and fuel to see the Vernon Islands, but I wouldn't go back on such big tides again. I will take a look at the calendar and plan something for making tides sometime in the next dry season. For now it might be time to start chasing barra and threadies again.