Nomad day liveaboard Trip - Northern tip of Great Barrier Reef
I flew into Cairns a day early and drove up to Port Douglas. I walked the docks and BS’ed with some of the charter captains to get the first hand low down on grander blacks (next time).
On the 9th I met up with the other 11 guys on this trip. They were from all over the world but I was the only American. We caught a turbo prop (Dash-8) from Cairns to a place off of the very northern tip of Australia called Horn Island. From there we caught a small recip engine plane (Aero Commander) with a 24 YO pilot (three trips to shuttle us all) to a place up near Papa New Ginny called Yorke Island.
We were to overnight there in some cabins then meet the boat the next morning. The only people on the island were a few Aboriginals and like a lot of Aboriginal communities, it was dry. Some almost went into a panic but like any first class operation would have done, the guys from the boat managed to get a large ice chest full of beer to us for the night,
The next morning we were met at the dock buy a fishing guide in a Contender and shuttled to the mother ship. We were given a quick safety briefing, shown to our bunks and told what boats we were assigned to for that day and we were off to catch fish.
The mother ship has 3, four man bunk rooms and 2, two man rooms. There is also a galley and social area but most evenings were spent on the top deck shooting the s#!* because that was the only place on the boat where the smokers could partake in a smoke.
Nomad provides all top of the line tackle (Stella 18000 and a smaller Stella's rigged with 40lb braid which they refer to as “light gear”). They also provide top of the line poppers, stick baits and terminal tackle but you have to pay for what you use and loose. That adds up when fishing around reefs for big fish.
On day one I was on one of the smaller boats. The guide went straight after the giant trevally. I wasn’t too impressed until one exploded on my popper. I had always just assumed that they we just a bigger version of a jack cravel but instantly realized just how wrong I was. I didn’t know what to expect so before I could get him turned he had me in the reef and took my 50 dollar popper. Round two didn’t go much better but by the third GT I learned to immediately put max pressure on these fish or it would cost me. While throwing to GT we also picked up a lot of other interesting critters. During the week I caught 16 species that were new to me along with quite a few that I had caught. We caught GT’s, Sailfish, one dog tooth tuna (could have caught more but the sharks were getting them so we stopped trying), many different species of reef trout, red bass, several species of emperor fish, a bunch of other cool critters and a Giant maori wrasse.
We fished our way from Yorke Island, across the Torres Straights to the northern tip of the outer Great Berrior Reef and down to a little place called Portland Roads. About 20 people live there and they all looked like they might be off of the grid for one reason or another. We took this odd six wheeled transport about 45 minutes by dirt road to an old WWII airfield near Lockhart River for our flight back to Cairns.
It was an awesome adventure and we caught some amazing fish with a great bunch of fishing guides
posted by Al at 1:47 PM
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