The highlights from August 2017
August proved to be another fabulous month here on the beautiful Sunshine Coast. We really only had one (and a half) weekend(s) out due to unpleasant weather. Although we have not had rain for some time now, we have experienced a few, shall we say “ordinary” days, with strong winds and swelly seas, keeping us grounded in port.
Whale Watching Trips
On the other side of things, our mid-week WHALE WATCHING trips are, slowly, gaining momentum. Some of these have been absolutely spectacular to say the very least. Even our bird watching trips (More on these below) have turned into amazing whale watching trips! Have a look at a few of the images and some footage:
Hela-Va Jet, our offshore Jet Boat, is getting the same results most trips as well. And when you as close to the water as you are on this boat, the whales really look VERY big!
Deep Sea Fishing
With the abnormally high winter temperatures (We have not really had much of a Winter here on the Sunshine Coast at all this year) we certainly have not seen the influx of Snapper and Cobia we normally do. Most trips are still very much a mix of both Summer and Winter species. Towards the end of the month we finally started to see a bit of a resurgence of the Spanner crabs, even though the vast majority are well under size. At least there are clearly crabs about which will hopefully spawn in November and December to restock the levels back to where they should be.
Amongst our August trips one of the highlights was the 11 hour fishing charter which took us out past the Barwon Banks in search of the bigger fish, and we were not disappointed. It was actually Angie’s birthday and it was a stonker of a day.
And Angie got in on the fishing action too as you can see below!
August in general did see a lot of Tea Leaf Trevally, Amberjack, Parrotfish (Surprisingly so), and Mack Tuna. Along with the usual year round fish such as cod, pearlies, squire, Mowong, tuskies etc.
This stunning Coral Trout was released back to the Coral Sea to fight another day and the only memory the person that caught it wanted was this picture of it. So I thought I would share it will everyone as these fish are seldom released!
Aboard Crusader we have been experimenting with different styles of bait, and we believe we have found an excellent mix which is seeing great results in most conditions. A combination of our own designs of both hooks and plastics combined with bait is the final result of which our customers feedback has been overwhelmingly positive!
We have had a lot of groups book their trips with us. Our vessel’s size at 55 foot makes it ideal for larger groups to still be able to head out for a day of fun together. We also had another school outing which was again strongly supported by Gary of De Bretts on Parkyn Parade.
August also saw another Pelagic birdwatching trip (you can read the full post on that here). Its funny how we all hang out for calmer winds and seas for fishing and whale watching, these guys prefer stronger winds. But so far every trip has seen beautiful calm conditions, making their trips more whale and marine watching than true pelagic bird watching! Ah well, as they say, “be careful what you wish for!”. No doubt they will soon enough have the weather they are currently wishing for.
General Trip stuff
Of course the Beautiful Coral Sea off Mooloolaba here on the Sunshine Coast provided for some amazing sunrises over the ocean. Zoe took a number of amazing shots. Here are just 2 of them:
And of course we still had the other usual marine encounters such as dolphins (Yes, Crusty is still visiting us almost every day when fishing!).
So that caps off another month of fun and sunshine here on the Sunshine Coast. With the September school holidays just around the corner, we can only hope that the weather gods decide to grant us all more of the same.
We hope to see all of you out with us for some awesome fun soon!
