Our Latest Trip Report to Marion Reef from the 25th April-23rd May 2007 is as follows:-
For Malcolm Crane's Marion Trip Report CLICK HERE
For Chris Harrison's Marion Trip Report CLICK HERE
Click HERE to check out Marion Reef on our location guide.
Summary - We've seen some sights that are still very hard to believe. The biggest GTs that Nomad Sportfishing has ever encountered were in attendance at Marion Reef on our last round of trips. GTs well in excess of 80kgs were in abundant numbers and were quite willing to give anyone who cared to cast a lure in the wrong direction a severe lesson on why these huge fish are so hard to catch.
The massive Coral trout and doggies were also in very good numbers at Marion in May, along with a lot of small to medium sized black marlin and some very big sailfish. But it was definitely the GTs that stole the headlines on this last round of trips. There's way too many stories from the whole trip to include here, so the trip report will only mention a few highlights.
Report - The first week saw Will Burrell and his wife Celia join us with a group of their friends to celebrate Will's 40th birthday. Will and Celia are the previous owners of the famous El Questro Station in the Kimberly region, and we were quite honoured that they chose us as the hosts for such a special event. Will and Celia have spent the past 18 years operating El Questro Station, and having just recently sold the station, are finding time to enjoy a little more fishing, diving and relaxing.
The weather was perfect for the first week with the Burrell Group, and there were a few fish on the chew as well. There were 6 couples on this trip and scuba diving was also high on the agenda with many husband and wife diving teams experiencing some of the most amazing scuba diving imaginable. We have been fortunate to experience some dive sites that have probably never been visited by anyone before, and the fish life and coral structures found around the reef were testimony to this.
On the fishing front there's a very interesting story to tell that Will will probably not want recounted, but that's too bad!
Will probably had not had the best of luck on the fishing front for the first part of the trip and on the last afternoon he elected to go and collect crayfish with Tim near the mothership. I was keen to get out and chase some doggies on the good tides we were having, and Will's wife Celia and good friend Miranda were also keen for some more fishing, so we headed off in the dory to Mogi Pass, just north of the mothership. Celia was straight into it getting busted off on the first pass over the ledge, it looked to be a serious dogtooth, well over 50kgs that busted her off. The next 2 hours was nothing short of utter chaos. We hooked up no less than 9 massive dogtooth and got utterly smashed on every occasion. We were jigging with soft plastics and Celia lost a heap of big fish in the coral, and also was hooked up to a 140kg black marlin for about 2 minutes before it spat the hooks in a spectacular jump near the dory. As the light was fading and our demoralization was nearly complete Celia hooked another monster on the jig and we screamed out away from the ledge, nearly on the plane while poor Celia was left at the front of the dory to hold onto what was now nearly 20kgs of drag (many of you will know exactly what I mean!!). After an incredible effort and a bit of luck, Celia had the best part of 50kgs of dogtooth tuna at the side of the boat. This was an impressive effort from a very determined girl!
Back at the mothership Will had caught a few crayfish but the envy was palpable when Celia returned with stories of big doggies and marlin. At least Will has an excuse to come back to beat Celia's record now!!
The 2nd week was when we were introduced to the massive GT brigade. I'll keep this brief because I am risking my integrity here by spreading such unbelievable stories, but the following is all true. We had a group of very keen GT anglers this week, and there were a few 35kg GTs taken from the beach and from the dories, but it was what we did not catch that we will all remember.
PICTURES.... where are they you say, well we have none because we didn't even go close to landing one of these giant GTs. They were all living in shallow coral pools only 3-4 metres deep, and as the tide rose each day around the moons we could watch as these giants swam over the shallow coral, backs out of the water and thrashing madly to get from one pool to the next to destroy some poor fish in each pool. We saw this numerous times as GTs in excess of 6ft long swam across 2ft deep water, with their backs out only to go into another shallow pool and erupt on the surface as they nailed another fish.
Chris Harrison had a 50kg GT hooked up at the side of the boat, and looking half a chance to land it when a GT at least 50% bigger again charged the hooked up GT and ripped the stickbait from its mouth and proceeded to bust us off in the coral.
Our first afternoon encounter with these monsters saw the boat with Malcolm Crane, Chris and Chris hook up to 8 GTs in 4 hrs fishing. We landed 1 GT around 15kgs. Every other GT we hooked was in excess of 50kgs, and we were not hooked up to any of these for more than 10 seconds. The largest GT we saw that afternoon was the biggest GT I have ever seen by a substantial amount. It was over 6ft long and nearly 1ft across the head, and based on other fish I have seen I would have to estimate it at over 85kgs. And for the record, we got a good look at this fish as it calmly swam under the dory in 3 metres of water with it's mate of similar proportions in tow. And to make things even more difficult to believe, these fish calmly swam under the boat after the biggest GT I have ever seen eat a lure crushed Malcolm Crane's stickbait and blew him away in the Coral so calmly and surely that it was frightening. After the first fish blew Malcolm away, his 2 mates came out and swam under the boat just to make sure we were in no doubt as to who was boss on these reefs.
This type of carry on was standard procedure every time we visited this area on the right tides for a 3 week period. The biggest GTs you have ever seen just blowing away angler after angler. The type and size of equipment or the strength of the angler counted for nothing. I had two ex Olympic water polo players battling these monsters with 130lb braid and short, brutal fisherman rods with cranked drags and full palm locks on the spool, and we reached the conclusion that it does not matter how hard a human can pull on these fish, using current gear and techniques in this area, they are just unstoppable.
Oh I forgot to tell you about the pair of 6ft long GTs that we saw fighting on top of a shallow bommie, in 2ft of water, for what I can only imagine was some poor fish that they were trying to tear apart. They started fighting only 30m away from the dory and with all manner of gear raining down on them they were not interested in our offering. Obviously the 10kg coral trout that I can only assume they were fighting over was more appealing than our paltry little stickbaits and poppers. Now, these fish were thrashing on the surface with their backs out of the water and were that big that we initially thought they were sharks due to the width across the head.
Where were we..., yes frighteningly big GTs. I won't bore you with too many more big GT stories, but there was a particularly good incident where Chris Harrison (6'3" ex Olympic water polo player-big guy) hooked up a solid-probably 60kg- GT around one of these pools. Now he hooked it on the edge of the pool and somehow managed to brutalize it over the edge of the pool and onto the shallow reef flat, at which point it started swimming towards us, due in part we thought to Chris's animal like effort on heavy braid, only to get to the side of the boat and calmly swim past the boat looking at us, flanked mind you by a pair of only slightly smaller 50kg GTs on either side, from which point it eyeballed all onboard the dory and the proceeded to calmly swim over the edge of another shallow pool and demolish Chris in the coral. This was despite Chris's grunting, groaning, 30kgs of drag and palm locking the spool in a vein effort to stop the fish. There was simply nothing we could do but watch and laugh/cry/yell/swear and then cry some more.
Chris came to the conclusion that someone needs to drug test the GTs at Marion Reef. I fully concur and we are looking into ways to deliver a sedative through the hook points on hookup to give us a fair chance.
Anyway, this caper continued for many weeks around the good tides, the GTs came to play in the same places at the same times. Truly amazing. I said to the guys on this trip that all the effort that goes into building a mothership and setting up in a remote location was all completely justified by the sights we saw in those days around the moon in May. Just simply mind blowing stuff that none of us will ever recover from.
Back to our third week, and the wind did blow quite a bit on this week which kept us from being able to access some of the good dogtooth tuna locations, and this combined with some small tides kept the fish a little slow for a few days, but there were plenty of big coral trout and red bass to keep us entertained in the shallows. The good thing about this area is that even on a windy week, you can have some amazing action fishing the shallow reef areas. 10-15kg coral trout are now becoming a common catch at Marion Reef.
One of the other highlights of Marion Reef May 2007 was the success of soft plastics. In particular we were using a combination of 6" Bozos mullets on TT lures jigheads. This combination accounted for everything from sailfish to 50kg dogtooth tuna and 20kg coral trout. The use of soft plastics on the jigging side of things means that even guys who are not able to do the usual high energy jigging associated with metal jigs can experience the fun of catching some massive fish on jigs, but with minimal effort. There will be a feature story in Fishing World magazine in the next few months on the success of these Bozos and TT Lures soft plastics.
Overall, this lot of trips were a huge success for all concerned, the GT fishing was simply as good as it gets, the dogtooth tuna were a little slower than in October 2006, but the Coral Trout and sailfish certainly more than made up for it.
For anyone interested in Marion Reef dory trips in May 2008, we currently have 4 places still remaining, so if you are interested, get in quickly.
Please also have a look at the trip reports from Chris Harrison and Malcolm Crane to get another perspective on the Coral Sea, rather than just taking my word for it.
Hope to see many more of you out on the water sometime soon.
Damon Olsen.
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 All material copyright Nomad Sportfishing Adventures 2007
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