First Trip to Turkey Beach

The missus and I joined the Bribie RSL Fishing club at the beginning of the month and immediately joined them in a fish of the ocean beach on Bribie for whiting. Whiting is a small long fish which is nice eating. I caught nothing. The other half caught an undersized one. Talking to other members, we heard they were going to go to Turkey beach at the end of the month for a week’s fishing. I had no clue where Turkey beach was or what kind of fishing we were talking about, but it sounded like fun, so I asked if there was room for one. Franko the guy organising wasn’t sure but he would see. A couple of days later I get an email inviting me to a meeting for those going, it appears they had looked at the long-range forecast and realised the weather would be crap the week they were planning so to take advantage of the current good weather they needed to go the next day. It was 3pm in the afternoon and they were heading out at 7am the next day. At least now I knew Turkey beach was about six hours north and around a place I was familiar with at 1770. One of the club members owned accommodation there, and the plan was to go out to the lower Great Barrier Reef chasing the big ones. Little was I to know how big they could be. Crap, now I had only a few hours to pack, organise my gear, I wasn’t even sure if I had suitable gear.

We took three boats and three cars up with two in each car and boat; I travelled with Alan, who owned the accommodation. Apparently, he purchased 5 acres of bare land and two pre-built houses. In between the houses is a covered balcony where the BBQ Bar and eating place.

We went out to towards the reef on the Wednesday and planned to stay overnight on the boats, returning on the Thursday. The weather was going to blow up a bit of Friday and be fairly nasty on Saturday and Sunday. So we planned to come home on the Sunday to be in in time for a Fishing Club BBQ on Sunday afternoon.

Most the fishing was in 12 – 15 meters of water, with us drifting out passed the drop off to about 20 to 30 meters of water. We were using pilchards, and squid for bait with a few small baitfish we had caught as we used 30 Lb (15 KG) line mostly, One Coral Trout caught on a floating pilchard gang hooked on a four-string of hooks in about 10 meters of water.)

Alan had a portable Fridge Freezer on board the so we had a place to keep in fish caught, the space upfront of the boat was just enough for two people to get a sleeping bag into. The distance to the furthest place on the reef we went was about 85 kilometres, we took it in chunks, heading to inner reef fishing spots as we progressed out.