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Our latest Trip Report to Frederick and Wreck Reefs 28th July - 23rd August 2008 is as follows:-
Click HERE to check out Frederick Reef on our location guide
We will visit Frederick and Elusive Reef in August/September 2009 as part of our Ultimate Adventure Trips

I need to say straight up that if that second image of the mothership at anchor, in the above slideshow, doesn't give you goosebumps, then you may need to get your pulse checked. I don't think we've ever had a picture that better summarises the incredible scenery and anchorages available in the Coral Sea. The colour of that image is absolutley real, with no enhancements at all - Just stunning!! Makes me want to be back there right now.

Summary -
This is pretty easy to summarise - The best allround bluewater action we have ever had on any trip ever in the Coral Sea bar none!!
Everything was on the chew and eating ferociously. 45kg wahoo, 55kg GTs, a 90kg dogtooth, marlin, sailfish, big yellowfin, big mahi mahi, red bass, massive coral trout, even a shortbill spearfish. We actually counted wahoo releases one week and got to 550 wahoo released in a week between 3 boats, and that was only targetting them for a few hours each day in between doing other types of fishing as well. The average size of wahoo was about 32kgs, and they ranged from 28-45kgs. The jigging, popper fishing, trolling, flyfishing, were all awesome. In fact everything we did produced extraordinary results. There simply isn't room in this report to go over every detail, so I'll just have to recount some of the highlights from each week. There's no reason that the fishing shoudn't be just as good on the Frederick/Elusive Reef trip in Aug/Sept 2009.

Trip Report:-
This is probably the most difficult report I have ever had to write, because I just don't know where to begin. The first week of the trip was spent at Wreck Reef, and we had 60kn of wind on the first night, but the rest of the month saw spectacularly good weather. The fish were biting from Day 1, and the wahoo on the edges of Wreck Reef were prolific, and in sizes that brought tears to your eyes, especially when fighting them on jigging gear.
I guess the thing that stands out most about the wahoo fishing is the number of wahoo around these reefs, but also their size. They generally average around 32kgs, with many over 45kg, and a couple even approaching 50kgs. They are definitely big and fast, but what gets myself, and many of our other guests so excited is their aerial antics near the boat. I guess this does not happen many places in the world, because there are not enough fish to create the competition, but with so many wahoo in one place, they get themselves so excited that they literally jump out of the water at anything that moves.
This makes them incredible fun on 50-80lb spin gear with poppers and stickbaits. Nearly every wahoo that has a go at a stickbait or popper gets airborne in some way or another, and they are so fast that you never even see them until they are 10ft in the air with your lure sideways in their mouth.
The wahoo during the first week provided a huge amount of action for everyone, whether trolling, flyfishing, or casting stickbaits. We had a couple of beautiful calm days where we could just drift in the dories for hours on end and cast to schooling wahoo. Sight casting to wahoo on an oily calm sea and having them get airborne only a few feet from the side of the boat is a breathtaking experience. The yellowfin tuna were also on the chew the first week, with some solid 40kg specimens taken on the troll, and also jigging. There were good numbers of sailfish around on the troll as well, with most boats raising a few sails every day. We also had a few days where numerous marlin in the 100-200g range were raised, hooked, and subsequently lost. The biggest marlin we saw would have been around 600lbs, being a very nice sized black marlin.
One of the biggest stories of the first week was the current that was running very hard and getting the big GTs all worked up along the up current edge of the reef. Every day of the first week produced multiple encounters with MASSIVE GTs. Many of these fish were over 70kgs, and several giants were hooked and lost. John managed to land one around 55kgs, and Daniel Caspar landed another one close to 50kgs. Jason had a day guiding his dory when he hooked 9 GTs that he estimated at over 50kgs, with the biggest well over 70kgs, and they only landed one fish for the day. Even with all the flash gear and fancy boat driving, there are days when the monsters of the ocean remind you who owns the playground!!
Mixed in with the GTs were several very respectable coral trout, and a few approaching 20kgs, the red bass were also on the chew and some massive 10kg specimens were taken casting in the first week as well.
The last night of the first week saw some awesome action at night off the back deck of the mothership, with quite a few guests, and one of our new guides from South Africa, recording their first ever dogtooth tuna captures. Most of the doggies were 10-15kg, but with the guys using soft plastics on 50lb spin gear, there were some monumental bustoffs as well.
We moved to Kenn Reef at the end of the first week, and the overnight trip was a very calm and easy one. After tucking into the anchorage at Kenn, we all quickly found the wahoo concentration on the northern end of the reef and set about having some serious fun with a fresh bunch of wahoo that were as crazy to eat lures as the ones we left at Wreck Reef.
I guess that there were many highlights at Kenn reef, but the dogtooth Tuna caught by George Poliakow during the middle of the week would have to be a highlight. George was fishing with Jason, no more than 1 mile from the anchorage and trolling a stickbait along a bit of rubbly bottom in 40m of water. The fish hit a 150 stickbait and proceded to nearly empty the spool on the Stell 10000. There was 3 wraps of line left when Jason was able to start reversing and chase the fish, and this was on 100lb Tuf Line. After an epic battle, conveyed to all over the VHF radio, George boated, photographed and released an estimated 90kg dogtooth tuna. George told everyone on the first day that his aim was to land a fish bigger than himself on the trip, and he did just that. This was a monster of a fish, and an epic battle, congratulations go to George for that one.
Another highlight of this week would have to be the incredible jigging action that we experienced on the last day. While Ed was trolling around in Saltaire nearby, and getting double wahoo hookups on fly, I was skipperring Nomad, and having some of the most amazing jigging action you could imagine. Every drift over the patches of bait produced double and triple hookups on every species imaginable. A couple of the triple hookups and releases we recorded were a doggie, wahoo and yellowfin all at once and landed, another was a doggie, GT and green jobfish all at once and landed, but the jewell in the crown of this jigging session was the quadruple hookup with 2 doggies, a wahoo and a GT, all landed and released. Most of the doggies and GTs in this session were between 10-20kgs, but the number of fish released, from relatively shallow water, was truly stunning. The guys onboard were so tired after a few hours that we had to go back to trolling.
The lagoons at Kenn didn't produce any monster GTs, and this was due to the lack of current, but the lagoons produced some amazing light tackle sessions on red bass and coral trout. Actually, there was also a session where Jason guided George and Dave to release 9 GTs in an afternoon's fishing, all were under 15kgs, but they were prolific on the flats and great fun on lighter gear. The last morning at Kenn produced 6 sailfish hookups on fly in 5 hrs one morning on Saltaire, and the guys were unlucky not to land any of the sails, but there were plenty around.
Our 3rd and 4th weeks were to be spent at Frederick Reef. This is a reef we have occasionally visited in the past, due to the amazing seamount, but we wanted to have some more time there this year to truly check out the potential. Short story was that Frederick was as good as, if not better than, Kenn and Wreck.
There is a seamount north of Frederick that rises out of 3000m of water to form a small plateau about 40m deep on top. This was to be the scene of some of the most ridiculous fishing action any of us had ever seen. Saltaire had a day of flyfishing on the seamount where they released 18 wahoo, all between 25-35kgs, from over 60 counted hookups. That is absolutley incredible action. The guys were sight casting to the fish for hours on a calm day without even having to move the boat, truly stunning stuff.
Trolling around the seamount produced some blue marlin to 300lbs and even a small shortbill spearfish taken onboard Nomad. There were plenty of mahi mahi and yellowfin on the seamount as well, and the action was non stop the whole time we were there.
Saltaire had a few goes jigging on the seamount, and managed to get past the wahoo a few times to get smoked by massive dogtooth tuna. The biggest doggie landed was around 30kgs, but the prolific wahoo bite made it hard to target the doggies.
Back closer to Frederick in the last couple of weeks, there was every species imaginable on the bite. The GTs were fishing well around the sand cays, with a few 30kg specimens landed. It wasn't fish a minute action on the GTs but it was good steady fishing for some quality fish.
The jigging around the top of the reef was simply superb, with lots of big coral trout, red bass and dogtooth tuna on the chew most of the times we tried. The sailfish were also around in good numbers with most days seeing at least one landed, which is not bad considering we are not targetting them most of the time.
The overall result of our Frederick Reef foray in the last 2 weeks was that we are planning on going back to this reef and combining a few weeks between Frederick and Elusive Reef in September 2009, for the ultimate in variety fishing options. Elusive has some of the best GT fishing on the planet, and to combine this with a few days on the seamount at Frederick will make an amazing trip. The Fishing at Frederick was great for us right up to the last day, and the other 2 times we made it out to the seamount, we had similar incredible action to the first day.
To be honest the whole trip has kind of blurred into one big wahoo jumping, yellowfin crashing, GT munching bonanza, and even finding the highlights is tough when the overall action was so good. I mean there are that many wahoo and yellowfin at these reefs that you can just go and catch as many of them as you want, and then when you are sick of that you can try jigging for doggies or go and cast for a GT, all the while knowing you could still be out there having wahoo crash your stickbait and take to the air with it.

Truly, one of the most memorable few weeks of fishing I have ever had. I simply can't wait for next year!!

Tackle Talk - We're going to start discussing tackle each month to let you know what we saw, what worked and what did not.

One of the best things we tried this month was the Rapala X-Rap 30 minnow. These things are truly indestructible, and simply catch fish. The wahoo absolutley love them, and we must have caught over 30 wahoo on individual X-Raps and they were still swimming (with a bit of fine tuning from the expert deckie!)

The full range of ripple Fisher rods got tested to the max this month, and the couple of rods that really stood out were the Jig 5215 and the GT79R casting rod. Both of these rods are just "sweet" that's the only way to describe them. I have never fished with a nicer jig rod than the 5215 Ripple fisher. It is so light, but handles 100lb braid with ease, truly impressive. The GT79R casting rod also stood out and is probably the best GT rod specifically for stickbaits that we have ever used.

The new range of Shout Kudako hooks in 5/0-7/0 proved themselves to be as good if not better than the Owner SJ-41 11/0 hooks that we have previously used. Very impressed.

The usual failures included guys using 80lb braid for big GTs. We keep telling everyone not to bring such light line, you will just loose the fish of a lifetime when it comes along.

The wahoo did some serious damage to the Saltiga and Stella Supply on board, with both types of reels having failures due to extreme loadings and extreme heat generated by seriously long hard runs. Mind you, the things that some guys do to their reels were not what the Japanese guys on the design table ever intended, let alone imagined, the reels would be asked to do.

That's all for this month, we're out at Marion and Elusive Reef next month, so look out for a great trip report. As I write this the boat has already arrived at Elusive Reef and landed 9 GTs in 4 hrs fishing from one boat!!

For anyone interested in the Frederick/Elusive trip in 2009, I suggest you get in quick because a lot of the guys on the trip this year are already confirming their places, and spots will be in short supply.

Hope to see you all out there soon.

Damon Olsen and the Nomad Crew.

All material copyright Nomad Sportfishing Adventures 2007