So, after having an average trip to the Montes in March we decided to head back on neaps next chance we could. That turned out to be this past weekend. Weather was looking mint and neaps fell perfectly over the weekend.

Thursday saw us head from Tom Price to Fortescue for the night prepping up to leave first thing in the morning. Apart from the sand flies present, even though we camped a fair bit away from the mangroves, it was not a bad night, and after a few tins we called it a night and waited for the tide to come in to launch.

Friday morning, we were up at 4 to launch the boat with the high tide. Unfortunately the southerly was up and looking like it was gonna cause a hinderance, we decided to play it safe and park up inside Fortescue Island and wait for the sun to come up and have a crack at crossing then. Come 730 the wind had actually picked up so we decided to jump in and have a look around, plenty of little stuff but nothing worthy of shooting. After moving to one of the outer islands and having a dive for a couple crays and a nice trout, we decided to risk it and head over to the protection of Varanus then head up in the protected water. After a fairly painfull trip over being bashed around by the 20-25kn southerly and significant wind chop, we made it to the calmer waters and headed up to Home Lagoon to unload. Time for a quick arvo dive, which produced another couple of good trout and some more crays, then headed back to camp to have a cook up and a couple of tins.

Saturday, and unfortunately the southerly was still up and about. After a quick fry up for breakky, we headed out for a dive around Ah Chong to wait out the forecasted morning winds. Few more trout and chased out by some significantly hungry and agitated sharks, we headed out to some deeper water to chase some bone, with good success on trout, cod, decent bone and a nice chinaman. After a feed we headed out to look for some macks and dollys, only finding trevors and an inquisitive juvy whaleshark. Time to head back to camp to fillet before sundown. With the weather magic and the ocean looking like glass, the call was made to head out for a night fish. Being the first time out wide i had no spots, so we headed out north to 40-50m and hit a spot straight away, with reds, chinaman and horse spangos coming up every drop, enough to fill the eskly in an hour and head back in to chase some squid in the shallows before heading back to camp for the night.

Sunday,  with a slight southerly blowing we decided to risk it and after a fry up and filletting the previous nights catch we headed out to the south to see if we could find some lumps to bash on. With some good ground but no significant fish and the wind picking up we made the call to head in and have a dive. What a great call that was, as we found some new ground that produced 3 horse bone, a nice barra cod, a couple 700+ trout and a few more crays to round out the day, bagged out by 3 and time to head back for the final night and pack up ready to leave in the morning.

Monday, was as you can imagine, perfect weather, with no room left in the 3 fridges and no ice in the eskys we made a call to leave and after less than a 2hr steam back to fortescue we were out of the water and headed home.

EPIC trip!!

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