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Yes, I did go to Marion a few weeks back, and spent the week with Damon as guide and entertainer. He is right - we saw some amazing sights! The full moon happened midway through the trip and for a couple of hours in the late afternoons when the tide was turning the big boys came out to play. Play with us that is, treating us with total contempt and disdain!!

You would recall that section of maze like reef and bommies, near that old shipwreck? That's where it would happen. The water is only a couple of meters deep at best, often shallower, and to describe it as a maze is pretty accurate. These monsters would appear out of nowhere, at times only a couple of meters from the dory. They were completely unafraid of the dory and would at times swim right up to it and under(if they could fit), and then disappear. They usually travelled in packs of 2 or 3, and they were huge, seriously big. We all know Damon is an excitable boy, but he swears they were bigger than anything he has seen at Fraser - so that means we were looking at fish all over 50kg, and some up to and over 60kg, possibly even more. Scary big!!! Way bigger than anything I have ever seen before, and that includes Komodo.

We saw these beasts doing amazing things, like going from one blue hole in the coral to another by going up and OVER the coral. Just forcing their way over on their sides, pectorals waving in the air, up to 75% of their body mass out of the water, just slowly thrashing their way to where they wanted to be. Amazing.

In one afternoon we saw 11 of these monsters. Now, i'm sure you are dying to ask what happened, did we hook-up and catch any, get them on the dory and in front of a camera. Short answer - they totally demolished us. 130lb braid, 170lb leaders, Carpenter big guns, made no matter. Complete mayhem in the coral. It was in most cases a matter of seconds only before bust-off.

Once we thought we were in with a chance. Chris Harrison hooked this escapee from Jurassic Park and it was in less than 2 metres of water only about 8 metres from the dory, Damon was heading towards it in the dory, Chris was looking in control, no coral in the immediate vicinity to bust us off, and then out of no-where another even bigger GT appeared and tried to rip the stickbait out of the hooked GTs mouth. There was this incredible sight of these two monsters battling over the stickbait, totally ignoring the not inconsiderable pressure Chris was putting on his Armorclad, enough spray and water in the air that it looked like a pack of sharks attacking, and it all ended in tears for us.

Damon figured the only chance you had in this environment was to get yourself into the same blue hole the fish was in. Therefore that meant hooking-up, backing right off on drag (even opening the bail arm) hope you stayed connected whilst gunning the dory over the coral and into the hole. You can rightly guess he wanted to catch one really badly! This unfortunately didn't end up in a capture, but did end up with 2 smashed props on the dory! Can't say we didn't try!

It is possible though. Last year in the same place Tim with Konishi landed one. Its picture is on the Marion report from last year with Konishi holding the GT up vertically in front of him, so it can be done. Bear in mind though that the fish we encountered were significantly bigger than this one.

Apart from the monsters ( who we ended up believing were teleporting themselves in from another galaxy), we did manage one GT estimated by Damon at 37kg, and another at 34kg. Plus others smaller of course, but none of these came from that area. Damon referred to these captures as "attendance prizes" , although i was pretty chuffed anyway.

All in all, unbelievable sights - and a fantastic trip on Nomad. I'm really looking forward to Bugatti now. I know it will be totally different, lots of "smaller" and therefore more manageable GTs, but you never know - the Stargate may open again and let through some of the Marion Monsters once more. I'll be ready for them!

best regards,

Malcolm

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