A great weekend away on an island

[igfafly]

Just back from a great few days camping in an idyllic spot slap bang in the middle of kawakawa and longtail tuna heaven, and lately seeing a nice showing of little blacks – couple of small boats, couple of mates – lot of fun.

Mission was to target longtails and marlin on fly predominantly, and then have a go at anything else that came along. Weapons of choice for me were TFO TiCrx 12 paired with a Colton Torrent 1113 for the marlin and a TFO BVK 9 paired with a Colton Torrent 789 for the tuna.

Weather report was a bit threatening given we would be standing out on the flat ocean waving around graphite sticks and indeed one evening we did have to head for the estuary with our tail between our legs.

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After sorting out the usual tackle porcupine pre departure, dawn on the day of departure saw us loading boats with all the necessary items….sadly short a case or two of beer due to lack of space – as it was we had to offload some weight from our boat to that of our mates as we could not get up on the plane !!! That would come back to bite us a few days later for sure…..cold beer does wonders to wash away the salt of a day on the briny.

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Idyllic conditions for a 30nm run up, pit stop to offload the gear, set up camp and get ready to fish and it was on.

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Marlin were hard to come by but on day one in particular we had tuna up by the busloads – hard to find the longtails though but there were mack tuna a-plenty, and a couple of especially big ones in the mix. The smooth, never failing drag of the Colton paired up nicely with the BVK, especially on the lighter tippets we were silly enough to be using, where line capacity, a forgiving protective tip and a lift-worthy butt section came into play.

Day two saw us teasing for marlin, getting 2 up, one a big fish indeed for the area, though both failed to switch and eat…had plenty of time on the tease with the fish sticking around for quite some time – just not overly keen to eat the fly…oh well….back to the tuna then.

Sharks were a bit of a problem (later switched to heavier tippets because of this) and we did lose a very nice longtail to them, as well as a host of other mack tuna, but enjoyed double hook-ups on the latter and had a ball.

Camp site was idyllic with views to die for on rising in the morning.

Awesome weekend and thanks to all involved in setting it up.

Definitely to be repeated….now to get set up for the striped marlin run off NSW for the summer.

Steve

[igfafly]

Pics stalled - seems site is having an issue - will add fish and other pics later once it is rectified.

Steve

[igfafly]

Try the pics again

Steve

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