The Swains

Ever since I was a young lad I had been regaled with stories about the mythical Swains Reefs - about 150km off shore of Gladstone (NE ish) . This location was held up as the last great bastion of the big manly fish killing trip - and they are sort of spot on.

Where is it ?

It is a large systems of reefs, the blue dot sort of indicates where it is. It is part of the Great Barrier reef.

We drove from Brisbane in 2 vehicles (about 7 hours) and others came from Rockhampton and Biloela. When you consider we spent a week at sea then a day or so to drive there is not a huge impost.





How did it all start ?

Well about October last year, Ron (my cousin on my Dad's side who lives around the corner - ish) and I were talking and decided to see if we could raise a party of eager anglers to test the theories regarding the fishing at Swains (note I dropped the word 'Reef' or 'Reefs' as once you have become a veteran of this area you get to do that).

We did some research and found what appeared to be an able vessel to convey us to this mythical fishing paradise - that boat was the fair ship Norval out of Gladstone (http://www.norvalcharters.com.au/).

This turned out to be a fantastic decision, whilst the boat at first glance appears to be a large bathtub and potentially not the most comfortable vessel in a swell I can attest that her and her crew conveyed us in comfort, safety, courtesy and professionalism at all times. Scott the skipper and Marty the decky (that is short for deck hand) not only found us fish then processed them but also feed us like kings (seriously guys you can supply heaps less food!) and kept the boat clean at all times. There are also four smaller boats (dinghys or dories) that can be used for getting closer to the reef.

This Scott, the skipper, helping Dave to get a fish on board.














The next 2 shots are of Marty who I think got really scared by a fish as a kid because the way he clubs the shit of them with the donger can only make one believe that there are deep seated issues boiling away !














Seriously - you could not fault the crew - they were brilliant.












Enough of them and on with the real story, who were the gallant band of fisher folk who decided to brave the sea, the beer and jokes from Wally (more on that later). I will introduce them, oldest to youngest in order to pay correct homage to their wise ways and experience (I am pretty sure I have the order wrong - I know):

• Max

• Noel
  

• Wally
  

• Don
  

• Dave
  

• Ron

• Ivan
  

• Gary

• Brad
  

• Steve

The Fish

The real reason we were there, I suppose, was for the fish and boy did we nail a great mixed bag. The specis boated were shark, chinaman, mackeral, tuna, coral trout, coronation trout, spangled emporer, red emporer, wahoo, tusk fish and some that I am sure I missed. Below are just a couple of shots of the fish. We all took home a good couple of boxes of fillets each - a great week by any measure.

Once we caught the fish the ever helpful crew landed them and then proceeded to cut them into fillets and individually wrap then in bags that had the species labeled on them - making it very easy once we got home to work out just what we were eating.

We used mostly squid and pilchards for bait but once we start to land some smaller bait fish we would use the fillet and tails (the tails were awesome trout bait) to supplement the frozen bait - they called this hard bait.














































The fun

We also had some fun. On the way up from Brisbane to Gladstone a few cameras were produced to start things off.
















On the boat the food was fantastic, there was also some beer and other drinks that we took along - just to pass the night hours :-) The image below is the afternoon snack the crew would prepare for us, we also had smoked trevally and smoked trout wings - very nice.


























Don did his best to start the wine appreciation society at night, or whenever any pub around the world was open. There were some fine drops on the boat.















The days were great, listening to Wally's jokes, listening to how he knew the exact size and species of each fish that he managed to lose; or how his new and exciting rig combinations were dynamite for catching fish (I should not get too carried away as I am sure he outfished me).

The nights were also fun - listening to the unending supply of jokes from Wally as well :-)

The boat has a DVD/VCR setup so we watched a few 'classics' (Bad Santa, Team America, Two Hands, Platoon and others). I made some suggestions to the skipper (Don agreed) that he should look at modifying the boat to include a pot belly stove on the aft section of the boat as drinking port around that would be much nicer, a big screen TV as well would have helped. I think he mentioned something about not wanting to burn to the waterline with respect to the stove ! It would have made the wine appreciation society meetings all the more enjoyable.

The one thing that is always encouraging is when a bunch of us youngsters are lead on a fishing trip to be shown 'how it is done' and the elderly statesmen of the group lead the way by example - nice jobfish Max is what I am sure Noel is saying (be nice to your brother in law!).
















I could not recommend highly enough a trip to the Swains. I have left off this blog the day we spent in the dories on a shallow reef section - getting that close to things was very nice as well although we did better from the main boat so far as fishing goes.

All in all - fantastic, we will be eating reef fish in our house for many months to come. The trip was fantastic value from that sense.