That was fantastic Aron have you thought about catching some of those bait fish with small hooks and flicking them out, perhaps letting them swim around as live baits?

Yep working on the canoe, the NZ$ goes a fair way here , As I have heard it is not quite as easy as it looks , using the canoe. You wouldn't read about it but I only brought big hooks to catch big fish, will be buying some smaller hooks to try the live baiting.

NEARLY!, JUST SORT THE BOAT ISSUE OUT AND I WILL BE!

You should mail-order an arancia IRB, packed down into a crate with a 25hp tiller steer outboard. Just make sure the marlin bills don't puncture it!

Or buy two dugouts and connect them together with some wood, make a transom in the middle to hang an outboard off.

OK, for fish of small size like small sweetlips which the islanders love, goatfish, small trevs, you want small silver jigs or 3in soft plastics.
that is a little 3in sp got that little fish.

Little red bass like these will also take SPs, but if you have some small poppers, they are also very effective.

....
,...or small poppers like this for red bass, trevs or coral trout around inner lagoon bommies.

The fish you can get on small silver lures near or off beaches can be pretty substantial though, even big barracudas will troll along 10ft off the beaches looking for an easy meal.
If you have any 3-4in SPs, they are also very good flicked around bommies....



....up to quite decent fish like these....

on the little poppers.
That is using 20lb braid and 40lb trace on those lures, and set a heavy drag as it is really load and load stuff to keep them outa the reef.

However, for shallow stuff... the small SPs or 7gm or less silver jigs are the go.

Hope those help.... :-)

cheers mate, tight lines,
Stu.

Thanks random, I hope to get to the reef Islands at some stage, I have heard some amazing fishing stories about there.

Try Google 'ling' it, you maybe quite surprized how far away it is from almost every thing, as for the internet, it is a trial location, so i'm pretty lucky to have it and be able to keep in touch with fishing back home, its a good thing most of the locals don't have computers/knowledge of internet useage because it tends to go down pretty quick.

I cant wait to get up there again. Have been held up with weather in Cairns, but set sail for 8 weeks in the western sols on monday. Thanks for the tips on fishing spots Stu, pulled up the charts for Manning strait yesterday. It looks like we may spend a fair ammount of time there chasing fish on those seamounts.

Cluster what about one of those porta-bote..  4hp motor will get you out to the reefs etc...
http://www.tackletour.com/reviewportabote.html