Email: lasue@wn.com.au http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/
MURCHISON BOAT HIRE AUGUST 2009 ELETTER
I have been thinking about another boat for a while now and even got a quote for a 6.8m walkaround much the same as the 7.8m,
but what did pop up were the two 6.5m Blue Water Boat Hire boats that were at Exmouth. After making enquiries, Mick
Dell’Agostino unloaded them to me this month. Bought without motors, I am presently stripping them down,
repainting where needed and adding in new gear, new sounders, new radios, new deck washes, new carpet, new seats, new
storage cabinets, bait boards, new anchor rope, total rewire and repowering with new 150hp 4-stroke Yamahas.
MURCHISON BOAT HIRE AUGUST 2009 ELETTER
I have been thinking about another boat for a while now and even got a quote for a 6.8m walkaround much the same as the 7.8m,
but what did pop up were the two 6.5m Blue Water Boat Hire boats that were at Exmouth. After making enquiries, Mick
Dell’Agostino unloaded them to me this month. Bought without motors, I am presently stripping them down,
repainting where needed and adding in new gear, new sounders, new radios, new deck washes, new carpet, new seats, new
storage cabinets, bait boards, new anchor rope, total rewire and repowering with new 150hp 4-stroke Yamahas.
They are going to take a lot of work to get them up to Murchison Boat Hire standard, but are going to be really nice when finished.Licensed for 6 persons to 5nm offshore, the same as the 6.1m
Due for survey on the 17th September, I am going to have to pull my finger out to get them ready!After that the trailers will need to be looked at and revamped.
They will be priced a bit more than the 6.1m but will be noticeably bigger and faster.
Rate Rise
Well it had to happen, next year we will be having a small rate rise. This is the first one for 2 years and we kept the price the same this year during the so called “recession”. It was in fact the busiest year we have had yet! Unfortunately
everything is still going up so a small 5% increase as from 1/1/110 will occur. To be fair on those already booked and paid their
deposit/bond will get the old price for next year. This will also apply to anyone who books a boat for next year and pays
their deposit/bond before 1/1/10. So if you want to save: plan, book and pay before 1/1/10
The new prices will not be shown on my website until 1/1/10, but if you would like to know before, ring me or email me
and I will let you know.
Surprise Tuna
Early August the weather was exceptionally good. Calm fine days with little wind persisted for a couple of weeks!
I was in the middle of a kitchen renovation so found it hard to find time to get out, but a few delays gave me the chance
to get out on one of the better days. New competition fishing partner Jason Agrela and Daniel Jenks were aboard and we
headed north in the 7.8m boat. While looking for a ledge that I know about, we put some lures out. Not expecting much at this time of year and with 20.4 degrees water temp, it did not look hopeful. Just as we passed a plume of fish on the sounder, Jason’s chrome silver multi Halco went off resulting in this northern long-tail tuna.
We turned and had another pass over the spot while I marked the fish plumes on the GPS. This time Jason’s & my gear went off.
Double hook-up of yellow-fin tuna! You can see the differences in the two photos.We dropped baits on the fish schools that I had marked only to find swarms of big nor’ west blowies in residence!
We headed further out to deeper water and fished a couple of spots on my GPS resulting in this 9kg dhuie for me as well as a size red emperor, baldchin and big snapper. Jason and Daniel got a couple of smaller dhuies, snapper and red-throat emperor.Exmouth Marlin
Paul Seamer had the 6.1m boat up in Exmouth for a week or so, telling me they had a great time.
Not a lot of information was forthcoming but these photos sent from Christian De Ran shows that they got into some fish.
The highlight being this black marlin caught on a Halco Redhead!
Gnaraloo 2009
Dave Allen has been to Gnaraloo many times and returned with this report and pics. He did well again!
Why would you want to go anywhere else? This was our sixth trip up to Gnaraloo and we were expecting big things of this wonderful place. We took over the 7.8 metre boat from Laurie at the station which saved us having to tow the boat up. I must say I was even more excited when I first got a good look at it. We normally hire the 6.1 and decided this year to move up to the 7.8. It was fantastic, we felt extremely safe and fished on days when other craft had to turn around and come home early.
The conditions throughout the week were very testing, as the northerly winds churned things up a bit. The 7.8 definitely saved our week.
It was a very unusual week for us. We like to do a lot of trolling for Mackerel,
Wahoo and tuna but found the water temperature
to be much cooler than normal which resulted in few mackerel boated.
The only tuna around where some good sized Mack tuna (great bait) which provided us with a lot of entertainment. With the cooler temps, we were forced to do a bit more bottom bouncing than usual. To our surprise we found that the saddle tail perch and red
emperor seemed to like the conditions. We came across a lot more pearl perch, Rankin cod and spangled emperor than previous years
and had some great success in very shallow water close to land on one particular day.
It was good to see that the station owners had began to do a bit of work around the place. Paul seems to be a lot more motivated to enhance
the station as a tourist attraction and has begun to build rock walls and new roads around the chalets. I have never seen so many whales up there
before; they were everywhere and big ones too. Even to the point of us having to keep a good eye out as they did not seem to care about the boat at all.
The bay is a beautiful place and this year was no exception. Our virgin for 2009 was a guy named Dave Stanley, soon to be renamed shark man.
He is a keen fly fisherman and had a ball catching endless golden T’s and nor west snapper varieties off the beach. There was also a large bait
school cornered in the south east corner of the bay by some very large bronze whalers. These sharks attacked the school non stop for a whole
week. It certainly made me think as I was swimming out 100mtrs every day to fetch the boat from the mooring. Speaking of this, thanks
Laurie, the mooring was fantastic. Dave has been renamed the shark man as he hooked the only big sharks of the week. He did this three
times which was good for the rest of us as he kept them busy while we continued to catch good fish. We thought it was funny; however, Dave was not amused.
We were really hoping to get a chance to chase some sail fish. Laurie had given us a fair idea where to look and we certainly had all of the gear.
We spent a few hours trolling gardies and lures on what seemed to be the perfect day, only to go without any reward. We decided to catch a
few bottom fish for the table as it was getting on in the day and moved to one of our more reliable spots. On the way to this spot we decided
to send out a high speed jet lure just in case. We always do this and have had some good hook ups in the past. Getting close to our spot we
decided to bring the jets in. I stopped the boat and the boys reeled in the two jet lures. As this was happening, a sail fish grabbed one of the
jet lures and took off. We were so surprised to see a very large sail fish jumping out of the
water and out of control. What surprised me was its speed. The line was facing one direction and the fish was jumping out of the water
40 metres away in the opposite direction. I took control of the rod and set myself for a long haul. The sail did a few more jumps and we thought
the hook was set when the fish decided to go deep. Lots of line continued to peel off the reel at this stage, which we were not too worried about
as we had plenty. After a few minutes of trying to bring the sail back up I felt a few more big kicks and then nothing…lost. Bummer.
We did not have a chance to try for sails again for the whole week. There is always next year.
It was another great year up at Gnaraloo station with lots of more great fish and some even better times had with our crew and others up there.
We did very well on quality bottom fish and had some great fun with the Golden spot trevally in shallow water. The sun shone for most of the
week and the boat was excellent. Our week was made even better when on our return journey; we only had to tow the boat back to Carnarvon
for the next change over. We are already booked for 2010. By the way, I have three new words for cockroach:
red throat emperor, they were everywhere and tasty too.
Thanks must go to Laurie who always makes our experience the best he can. Thanks for the help and the hire. Sorry mate, no picture of Wahoo this year.
Enjoy the pics.
Dave Allen
Fishing the Mackerel Islands by George Raffa
It had been ten years since my last fishing trip to Thevenard Island and I intended to make this trip a special one. With me were my two sons Ricky and David, and fishing fanatic Paul De Boni. Planning started ten months ago with the necessary bookings including the most important of all, an appropriate fishing vessel. Some research led me to Murchison Boat Hire, in particular the 7.8m aluminium centre cab. The ultimate success and enjoyment of the
week was in no small part due to the comfort and safety of this magnificent boat. Our travel north was greatly assisted by Laurie offering to meet us at the Kalbarri turnoff with the boat. This saved us approximately two hours travel.
We arrived in Onslow on Saturday evening and spent the night at the Onslow Mackerel Motel setting up our rods and reels in anticipation of the next day’s fishing (we did not wish to miss a single moment). We awoke to a magnificent day with light breezes (which continued for the next three days) and the excitement of getting into the water spurred us to quickly load the boat, launch and head for the island. By 11.30am we had arrived and
settled into our “Coral” unit and by 12.30pm we had lunch and were heading for Airlie Island for some light spinning action.
Our plan for the week was “catch and release” only keeping one or two quality fish for the evening meal.
Over the next seven days we fished Airlie and Rosily Island, Rosily Shoals, Penguin Bank (including a long stint of trolling for sail fish in 60 to 70m) and drop-offs immediately west of Thevenard Island. All of the most successful way-points are still on the boat GPS, some were more successful than others and those lucky enough to hire Laurie’s boat next will certainly have a head start.
The fish caught were many and varied both in size and species but some of the more memorable ones included
mackerel, queenfish, trevally (both spotted and golden), barracuda, GTs (although not the 20klg plus that we were hoping for),
rankin cod, black spotted cod, coral trout, red emperor, sweetlip emperor and spangled emperor. We even managed to raise two
sail-fish but unfortunately without a hook-up. With the experience gained we hope to rectify the latter on our next trip.
Needless to say that it is not too often that one gets the opportunity to fish seven straight days. This we did with varying success
each day but in total the various experiences culminated in a magnificent week. The highlight of the week was undoubtedly
on the third day when casting poppers on the west side of Rosily Island for GTs we spotted a dozen or so torpedo shapes
chasing fish in the shallow waters. We immediately thought that they might be large barracuda or mackerel. The uncertainty
was soon dispelled when one of these predators took David’s popper and gave him a ten minute fight. It turned out to be a
magnificent mackerel of around twenty kilos. The action did not stop there as Paul also hooked a large fish only to see it jump and take the popper.
Unfortunately our island adventure all too soon came to an end and needless to say it was a grim group of guys making their way back to Onslow against a very stiff south east wind. The trip back to Perth was made more bearable with the many stories of the week’s events and certainly the memories of some of the superb catches will remain with us for a long time. We have already commenced planning for the next adventure.
Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club Monthly Comp 22nd August 2009.
Some good fish were caught during our August comp.
Son Jared teasing a skua with a mulie. The skua eventually took the mulie from his hand.
Sambo for Nik from his dinghy 
and junior Beau’s snapper from the same dinghy.
Land based sambo for Daniel 
and son Jared with his catch.
My mate drowned in a bowl of muesli. A strong currant pulled him in.
Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself.
Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. There are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my Dad, or my older brother Colin, or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think its Colin.
Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, and the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.
An old cowboy sat down at the Starbucks and ordered a cup of coffee.As he sat sipping his coffee, a young woman sat down next to him.She turned to the cowboy and asked, 'Are you a real cowboy?'He replied, 'Well, I've spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy.'She said, 'I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about naked women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about naked women. When I shower, I think about naked women. When I watch TV, I think about naked women. It seems everything makes me think of naked women.'The two sat sipping in silence.A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, 'Are you a real cowboy?'He replied, 'I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian.'
Popular Northern Destinations
Thevenard Island
There are new managers at the Onslow Mackerel Motel, Colin and Rosa will now look after you on the mainland.
Rosa will take your accommodation booking if you would like to visit. Phone her on 9184 6586
Colin will sort you out with a lock up storage area for trailers and your vehicle when you are at the island.
Drew is still the Island manager: 9184 6444.
This year the 6.1m and 7.8m boats are already booked for Thevenard Island but there are still spaces available for adventures in this great place.
bookings@mackerelislands.com.au
Check out the website: http://www.mackerelislands.com.au/
Gnaraloo Station
Gnaraloo contacts for accommodation:
Barbara: 9315 4809
Email: bookings@gnaraloo.com.au
Website: Gnaraloo.com.au
Game, Bottom and Beach Fishing Action
These links will take you to Youtube showing some great action video clips taken from
my boats and also a very good mulloway from the beach.
Triple tuna hook-up
Dhuie and snapper
Beach mulloway
Noel and Robyn are willing to accept bookings for my boats at Port Gregory
I will deliver the boat down there for 2 or more days hire for free.
& return it to Kalbarri for you.
Remember if you rent our accommodation in Kalbarri you get big discounts on our boats.
Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.
5-day weather forecasts, http://www.buoyweather.com/ go to virtual buoys, pick the location you want.
This is the one I go by!
Big bait – big fish
Laurie
Paul Seamer had the 6.1m boat up in Exmouth for a week or so, telling me they had a great time.
Not a lot of information was forthcoming but these photos sent from Christian De Ran shows that they got into some fish.The highlight being this black marlin caught on a Halco Redhead!
Gnaraloo 2009
Dave Allen has been to Gnaraloo many times and returned with this report and pics. He did well again!
Why would you want to go anywhere else? This was our sixth trip up to Gnaraloo and we were expecting big things of this wonderful place. We took over the 7.8 metre boat from Laurie at the station which saved us having to tow the boat up. I must say I was even more excited when I first got a good look at it. We normally hire the 6.1 and decided this year to move up to the 7.8. It was fantastic, we felt extremely safe and fished on days when other craft had to turn around and come home early.
The conditions throughout the week were very testing, as the northerly winds churned things up a bit. The 7.8 definitely saved our week.It was a very unusual week for us. We like to do a lot of trolling for Mackerel,Wahoo and tuna but found the water temperature
to be much cooler than normal which resulted in few mackerel boated.
The only tuna around where some good sized Mack tuna (great bait) which provided us with a lot of entertainment. With the cooler temps, we were forced to do a bit more bottom bouncing than usual. To our surprise we found that the saddle tail perch and redemperor seemed to like the conditions. We came across a lot more pearl perch, Rankin cod and spangled emperor than previous years
and had some great success in very shallow water close to land on one particular day.
It was good to see that the station owners had began to do a bit of work around the place. Paul seems to be a lot more motivated to enhancethe station as a tourist attraction and has begun to build rock walls and new roads around the chalets. I have never seen so many whales up there
before; they were everywhere and big ones too. Even to the point of us having to keep a good eye out as they did not seem to care about the boat at all.
The bay is a beautiful place and this year was no exception. Our virgin for 2009 was a guy named Dave Stanley, soon to be renamed shark man.He is a keen fly fisherman and had a ball catching endless golden T’s and nor west snapper varieties off the beach. There was also a large bait
school cornered in the south east corner of the bay by some very large bronze whalers. These sharks attacked the school non stop for a whole
week. It certainly made me think as I was swimming out 100mtrs every day to fetch the boat from the mooring. Speaking of this, thanks
Laurie, the mooring was fantastic. Dave has been renamed the shark man as he hooked the only big sharks of the week. He did this three
times which was good for the rest of us as he kept them busy while we continued to catch good fish. We thought it was funny; however, Dave was not amused.
We were really hoping to get a chance to chase some sail fish. Laurie had given us a fair idea where to look and we certainly had all of the gear.We spent a few hours trolling gardies and lures on what seemed to be the perfect day, only to go without any reward. We decided to catch a
few bottom fish for the table as it was getting on in the day and moved to one of our more reliable spots. On the way to this spot we decided
to send out a high speed jet lure just in case. We always do this and have had some good hook ups in the past. Getting close to our spot we
decided to bring the jets in. I stopped the boat and the boys reeled in the two jet lures. As this was happening, a sail fish grabbed one of the
jet lures and took off. We were so surprised to see a very large sail fish jumping out of the
water and out of control. What surprised me was its speed. The line was facing one direction and the fish was jumping out of the water
40 metres away in the opposite direction. I took control of the rod and set myself for a long haul. The sail did a few more jumps and we thought
the hook was set when the fish decided to go deep. Lots of line continued to peel off the reel at this stage, which we were not too worried about
as we had plenty. After a few minutes of trying to bring the sail back up I felt a few more big kicks and then nothing…lost. Bummer.
We did not have a chance to try for sails again for the whole week. There is always next year.
It was another great year up at Gnaraloo station with lots of more great fish and some even better times had with our crew and others up there.
We did very well on quality bottom fish and had some great fun with the Golden spot trevally in shallow water. The sun shone for most of the
week and the boat was excellent. Our week was made even better when on our return journey; we only had to tow the boat back to Carnarvon
for the next change over. We are already booked for 2010. By the way, I have three new words for cockroach:
red throat emperor, they were everywhere and tasty too.
Thanks must go to Laurie who always makes our experience the best he can. Thanks for the help and the hire. Sorry mate, no picture of Wahoo this year.
Enjoy the pics.
Dave Allen
Fishing the Mackerel Islands by George Raffa
It had been ten years since my last fishing trip to Thevenard Island and I intended to make this trip a special one. With me were my two sons Ricky and David, and fishing fanatic Paul De Boni. Planning started ten months ago with the necessary bookings including the most important of all, an appropriate fishing vessel. Some research led me to Murchison Boat Hire, in particular the 7.8m aluminium centre cab. The ultimate success and enjoyment of the
week was in no small part due to the comfort and safety of this magnificent boat. Our travel north was greatly assisted by Laurie offering to meet us at the Kalbarri turnoff with the boat. This saved us approximately two hours travel.
We arrived in Onslow on Saturday evening and spent the night at the Onslow Mackerel Motel setting up our rods and reels in anticipation of the next day’s fishing (we did not wish to miss a single moment). We awoke to a magnificent day with light breezes (which continued for the next three days) and the excitement of getting into the water spurred us to quickly load the boat, launch and head for the island. By 11.30am we had arrived andsettled into our “Coral” unit and by 12.30pm we had lunch and were heading for Airlie Island for some light spinning action.
Our plan for the week was “catch and release” only keeping one or two quality fish for the evening meal.Over the next seven days we fished Airlie and Rosily Island, Rosily Shoals, Penguin Bank (including a long stint of trolling for sail fish in 60 to 70m) and drop-offs immediately west of Thevenard Island. All of the most successful way-points are still on the boat GPS, some were more successful than others and those lucky enough to hire Laurie’s boat next will certainly have a head start.The fish caught were many and varied both in size and species but some of the more memorable ones includedmackerel, queenfish, trevally (both spotted and golden), barracuda, GTs (although not the 20klg plus that we were hoping for),
rankin cod, black spotted cod, coral trout, red emperor, sweetlip emperor and spangled emperor. We even managed to raise two
sail-fish but unfortunately without a hook-up. With the experience gained we hope to rectify the latter on our next trip.
Needless to say that it is not too often that one gets the opportunity to fish seven straight days. This we did with varying success
each day but in total the various experiences culminated in a magnificent week. The highlight of the week was undoubtedly
on the third day when casting poppers on the west side of Rosily Island for GTs we spotted a dozen or so torpedo shapes
chasing fish in the shallow waters. We immediately thought that they might be large barracuda or mackerel. The uncertainty
was soon dispelled when one of these predators took David’s popper and gave him a ten minute fight. It turned out to be a
magnificent mackerel of around twenty kilos. The action did not stop there as Paul also hooked a large fish only to see it jump and take the popper.
Unfortunately our island adventure all too soon came to an end and needless to say it was a grim group of guys making their way back to Onslow against a very stiff south east wind. The trip back to Perth was made more bearable with the many stories of the week’s events and certainly the memories of some of the superb catches will remain with us for a long time. We have already commenced planning for the next adventure.Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club Monthly Comp 22nd August 2009.Some good fish were caught during our August comp.
Son Jared teasing a skua with a mulie. The skua eventually took the mulie from his hand.Sambo for Nik from his dinghy and junior Beau’s snapper from the same dinghy.Land based sambo for Daniel and son Jared with his catch.My mate drowned in a bowl of muesli. A strong currant pulled him in.
Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself.
Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. There are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my Dad, or my older brother Colin, or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think its Colin.
Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, and the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.
An old cowboy sat down at the Starbucks and ordered a cup of coffee.As he sat sipping his coffee, a young woman sat down next to him.She turned to the cowboy and asked, 'Are you a real cowboy?'He replied, 'Well, I've spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy.'She said, 'I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about naked women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about naked women. When I shower, I think about naked women. When I watch TV, I think about naked women. It seems everything makes me think of naked women.'The two sat sipping in silence.A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, 'Are you a real cowboy?'He replied, 'I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian.'
Popular Northern Destinations
Thevenard Island
There are new managers at the Onslow Mackerel Motel, Colin and Rosa will now look after you on the mainland.
Rosa will take your accommodation booking if you would like to visit. Phone her on 9184 6586
Colin will sort you out with a lock up storage area for trailers and your vehicle when you are at the island.
Drew is still the Island manager: 9184 6444.
This year the 6.1m and 7.8m boats are already booked for Thevenard Island but there are still spaces available for adventures in this great place.
bookings@mackerelislands.com.au
Check out the website: http://www.mackerelislands.com.au/
Gnaraloo Station
Gnaraloo contacts for accommodation:
Barbara: 9315 4809
Email: bookings@gnaraloo.com.au
Website: Gnaraloo.com.au
Game, Bottom and Beach Fishing Action
These links will take you to Youtube showing some great action video clips taken from
my boats and also a very good mulloway from the beach.
Triple tuna hook-up
Dhuie and snapper
Beach mulloway
Noel and Robyn are willing to accept bookings for my boats at Port Gregory
I will deliver the boat down there for 2 or more days hire for free.
& return it to Kalbarri for you.
Remember if you rent our accommodation in Kalbarri you get big discounts on our boats.
Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.
5-day weather forecasts, http://www.buoyweather.com/ go to virtual buoys, pick the location you want.
This is the one I go by!
Big bait – big fish
Laurie
We caught a monster pinky at the spot called `trout` just as the swells were getting worse and worse.
Details are a but sketchy as I was up north, but son Ben managed the boats while I was away
We stopped and got the obligatory photo at the King Waves Kill Sign
The resident big cod came to the back of the boat
A couple of males and a female caspian tern were active on the beach. (It is obvious that the female is on the left)
The whales performed near the boat and with the sun in the right place for a change!
10kg rankin cod, 
red emperors, 
and 13kg golden trevally. Mixed in with that were
Snorkelling was very good again in the Gnaraloo Bay sanctuary zone and we did have a snorkel at 3 Mile. The water was a lot murkier at 3 Mile but this was due to the larger swell that kicked up on the last day. The fish were bigger and more numerous, but the coral not as good. All the above coral pics by Sue and taken at Gnaraloo Bay.
Sue, myself, and Paul. We rigged gardies on home made outriggers.
The swell was really pumping and these guys got wet!
Ross says with a grin from ear to ear. "Must of been the bait!" jokes Lui.
"Yeah, you guys might wanna come a have a look at this" Lui gloats.
Son Jared deserves it this month. Hooking up to a sail on a garfish set for a mackerel, Jared fought the fish on inadequate gear for a couple of hours. His second sailfish took both baits set for sails, both circle hooks setting which saw Paul and Jared
Paul shows off a very good mackerel he caught from my boat at Coral Bay this month.