When Nik Key caught up with his old friend David Reid, who has been fishing off the Western Australian coast for many years, they naturally discussed upcoming salty adventures. It turned out there was a seat available for Nik on a six-day liveaboard trip to the remote Mackerel Islands…

The trip would be onboard Top Gun Charters, leaving from Exmouth and spending five days moving around the Mackerel Islands trolling lures and bottom fishing. ‘You only live once’ I thought to myself, so I jumped at the chance to lure fish in a very different and well-stocked fishing area!

Getting the gear ready

Planning for a fishing event is one of my favourite things to do! The charter would be predominately bait fishing, with baited dropper rigs and lures trolled out the back for both demersal (bottom-dwelling) and pelagic (upper-to-top-dwelling) fish. I now had to work out what gear could handle these very different species from what we have here in New Zealand. I wanted to use heavy 200 to 250g kabura jigs over there, as I had heard the drifts were in 40 to 110 metres and relatively short. I have found heavy kaburas to be lethal in my past seven years of charter experience so decided to mainly fish this style (with some slow pitch and inchiku styles thrown in too). I also heard that the fish were dirty fighters with big teeth... not to mention the sharks.

Gold band snapper were one of the target species for the trip.

I decided to focus on my high-quality and lightly made PE3-5 setups that I used for kingfish in New Zealand (one overhead and one spin). I also took some lighter PE2-3 gear but only used it when we were catching snapper (they have many different varieties of snapper over there). Here is what I took:

1) Overhead kingfish set – Legit Design rod (Aramid Fibre) with PE2-5 line weight, 5’6’’ length and capable of 150-400g jigs. I matched this with a Next300 reel with 25kg 8-strand braid (H100 drag system with 25kg max drag). This outfit is very light but has amazing lifting power. I had 100lb supple trace as my leader (2m). When trolling I used 80lb wire trace to stop the Spanish mackerel from biting through the leader. I planned on using large kaburas (200-250g) and other assorted slow jigs on this set.

2) Spin kingfish set – Legit Design rod (Aramid Fibre) with PE3 line weight, 5’7’’ length and capable of 250g jigs. I matched this with a Penn Slammer 5500 reel with 20kg 8-strand braid. Again, I had 100lb supple trace as my leader (2m). I primarily used Bottomship and other inchiku-style jigs on this rig.

3) Overhead snapper set – Catch 150 acid wrap rod with pe2-3 with Poseidon 50sj reel. 9kg 8-strand braid with 40lb supple trace as my leader (this is my go-to charter setup for slow jigging mainly kaburas in 20-60m).

4) Top-water set - Never used on this trip.

5) Light soft-bait set - Used once and I got wasted by a big fish, so it was put away, and I went back to bigger gear!

I took a range of soft-baits from 4-10 inches, kaburas (100 -250g), assorted Bottomships, knife and inchiku jigs (100-300g). In total, around 20kgs of fishing gear!

Getting to the boat and setting up onboard

The day finally came when I boarded the plane and flew from Auckland to Melbourne and then to Perth. From Perth, we loaded all the gear and drove 13 hours to Exmouth where we boarded our live-aboard boat for the next six days, Top Gun II.

Nik's vessel for the trip, Top Gun II.

We met the other passengers (10 in total) and after some predictable Aussie/Kiwi banter, settled down for a good night’s rest before the action began. I was the only crew who would be using jigs-only, as they were tried and true bait fishers. A few of them dabbled in jigs but preferred the proven bait style and were interested to see how I got on.

Most of their setups were big solid rods and electric reels with huge sash weight sinkers and a two-hook baited dropper rig (the proven fish-catching workhorse). They were all fishing down one side of the boat (drift fishing), leaving me the whole back of the boat to myself. This worked out well, as I could fight my fish with no one next to me, avoiding tangles (perfect)!

Day 1 – Exmouth to Thevenard Island

The day first day started with clear blue skies and a forecast of 29 degrees Celcius. Deckie Shaun decided we should troll Rapala bibbed topwater lures over bommies (submerged offshore reefs) on the way to Thevenard Island (first stop/overnighter). For this, we used our bottom fishing sets with 80lb steel trace on 80-100lb leader.

The first fish we caught in 40m was a rankin cod (grouper). This amazed me as these fish are bottom dwellers that live in caves like our grouper do. He obviously saw the boat moving along and came up from his hiding place to investigate.

This rankin cod came up from the depths to eat a trolled Rapala.

Next, we tried bottom fishing in 50m with quite a brisk drift due to the 25-knot winds. My first drop was on my PE2-5 overhead gear (25kg braid, 100lb trace and a 250g orange/pink kabura with heavy skirts). I hit the bottom and, on my second wind, got smashed as the large fish railed me and went back into his cave (big trout or grouper). The 100lb line parted on the sharp coral reef. I was now thinking I may be under-gunned, and that was why all the old fellas who had been doing it for years had the big gear!

My next three drops resulted in different types of trevally (golden, silver and bludger). The first fish I hooked while fast retrieving the 200g kabura. I changed to an inchiku-style 200g in pink, and these were like candy getting hit on the drop (or on the fall while slowly mechanical jigging). The lures were coming into their own now, and as no one else was catching them, my new nickname was the trevally kid. Then the sharks came, and it was time to move.

The writer quickly earned the reputation as the trevally kid, much to the crew's amusement by the looks!

We headed out to deeper water to get away from the tax collectors. The next spot was in about 65m and the fishing was hot with the bite time all lined up. We caught rankin cod, red emperors and different varieties of snapper (gold band, dark tail and rosy). What a great start to our first day of fishing.

In Part 2, I will share the next four days where we encountered many more fishing adventures, including a double of sailfish, along with hooking a sailfish on my 200g kabura gear while bottom fishing in 42m of water. 

December 2022 - Nik Key
New Zealand Fishing News Magazine.
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