Fishing the Great Barrier Reef

One of the activities that I have been most excited about doing while we are in Australia, is fishing the Great Barrier Reef!

It's the type of thing that you really just can't experience anywhere else, and something that I felt was a must-do. Since we had already snorkeled on the south end of the great barrier reef in the Whitsunday Islands, when we got to the north I decided to go fishing, while Krissy and Paul went for another snorkeling adventure.

It was definitely the right call!

We took off early from Port Douglas, a beautiful little town in FNQ (Far North Queensland), and headed about an hour straight east onto the reef. Contrary to our assumption prior to travelling in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef sits roughly 10-15 miles off the coast - it's not something you just swim to from the beach.

The day was a bit overcast, but that wasn't a problem at all! We stopped at something like 7 or 8 different fishing holes along the reef, and I caught fish at almost all of them! My first catch came not 2 minutes after we arrived at our first stop, sadly it was less than an inch under-sized so it wasn't a keeper.

The highlight came about two hours into the day trip, when I caught a pretty little 8-10 inch parrotfish, and proudly proclaimed it to be bait! The boat operators were in complete agreement, and helped me put it back on the hook, alive!

I sent it back down and felt it swimming about on my line, but didn't get any bites at that stop. I pulled it in and threw it down at our next hole, still alive. With a live bait fish, the bigger fish will play with it a bit, sucking it into their mouth then pushing it back out. They key is to feel this on the line, but ignore it, and wait until the big fish swallows it whole and takes off! Then you set the hook, and reel it in! The results? This bad boy!

A lovely 10-12 lb. coral trout. This delicious fish sells for over $20/lb, and is VERY good eating fish. It would turn out to be not the biggest catch of the day, but the best eating fish! In the end I lost count of all my catches, bringing in at least 5 different species, but kept just the one, big pretty fish.

When I got back in from fishing, Paul and Krissy were waiting for me, and were quite excited that I had brought home dinner! We used the grill at the RV Park, and fried it up with some roasted red potatoes. YUMMMY