Happy Hooking!!

Thursday was, by far, the most exciting day yet! We set Rod's boat in at Yorkey's Knob marina at 6 AM and set out for a day of fishing... and we were all over the place! Fished along the Great Barrier Reef, spent a lot of time just out beyond the continental shelf, and stopped by Arlington Reef on the way back to troll from some mackeral (only caught a little one). The first fish I hooked was a huge something!! It took Rod, Brad and I an hour of taking turns to get the thing near the boat; and at about 1o meters below off the stern, we figured out I had hooked a 12-15 foot shark! Wahoo!! My first fish in Oz and it's a shark... could it start any better? Well, I guess it could've since the line broke only a few moments later and we lost it. Probably for the best anyway since there was no way we would've gaffed it to bring it on board the boat.

My second catch about 30 minutes later was two large mouth nannagi hooked at the same time on the double-hook rig we were using. It took a while to bring 'em in as were in ~ 65 meters and bottom fishing, but it a battke worth fighting... they were mmm mmm good at dinner :)

All in all, we caught a good variety of fish: Nannagi, Coral Trout, Red Emperor and 3 species of Cod; and I gotta say, as anyone who's gone out on our annual gulf stream fishing charter knows, it was a long and tiring day... espeacially as we had to clean our own fish. Actually, I helped clean the boat while Brad filleted most of the catch (a total of 40 keepers!)... then it was time to eat a late dinner with some white wine (I could get used to this! :), watch a couple episodes of 2 1/2 Men (I'm surprised how similar TV is over here) and off to bed.