Adventure Bound - Lord Howe Island - A Minimalist Approach

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Lord Howe Island - A Minimalist Approach

Written by Andrew Clark

Wednesday, 10 January 2007

Lord Howe Island

Over the last few years, the way I approach fishing trips away from home has changed dramatically. Gone are the days of taking 15 rods and reels, a squillion lures and enough spare line to start up a knitting loom. It's either been a result of getting older and wiser or more likely for continually incurring the wrath of the check in person at the airport for having so much excess luggage. Travelling to Lord Howe Island, you are forced to reduce your baggage weight because of the small aircraft used to service this remote location, so when I went to visit this sport fishing mecca recently, nothing but the absolute necessities made it into the tackle bag.

For this trip I took 2 reels, one thread line and one over head, both loaded to the max with 25kg braid, 2 matching 6" rods and one 9"rod and a single tackle box of lures with assorted bits and pieces. No massive game reels, no stroker rods, no 2 ton of jig heads - just the essentials. After a week of fighting some supercharged Lord Howe pelagics the only thing I wish I had brought was a gimble belt, even just a small one!

A nice hookup

This trip to Lord Howe was for a week and I went with 3 other blokes who all work in the fishing industry. We booked a charter for 3 days and intended to fish some of the awesome land based spots on the other days. We each paid a little extra for the charter so that we had the boat to ourselves. In retrospect it was the best idea. When you have 3 or 4 hook ups at once on solid king fish or huge trevally, the last thing you want is an over crowded vessel. The charter we booked was with local Jack Schick, a fifth generation islander, and somebody who has been on the Lord Howe fishing scene his whole life. The locals on the island are classics. They have an almost north Queensland accent, but with a more drawn out droll. On the first day of our charter there was a 2-3 meter swell and Jack was taking care not to make the ride too uncomfortable. We went over one big set of waves and missed the smooth landing on the other side and belted into the trough. Just as the boat started its free fall, Jack turned to me and in that thick accent as if he were an elevator operator just said, 'Goin' down......'.

One huge trevally

When Jack checked out my gear he looked at me, smirked and said I was going to be out gunned on 25kg braid and that I should have brought 80 lbs instead. I thought he was joking until the first session of bait fishing and jigging when we started catching some heavy weight kings and the biggest silver trevally I've ever seen. In Victoria you're lucky if you catch a silver trevally to 1.5kg. The trevally of Lord Howe are a sub species of the trevally we get back at home,....except they grow about 10 times bigger and go about 20 times harder. Pound for pound these trev's go every bit as hard as their GT cousins, and when you start loosing line to a fish while you're running 10kg of drag you know it's the real deal. After landing my first trev I could see why Jack had suggested 80lbs braid. When one of these trevallies in the 12kg+ range is hooked, the fight is won or lost in the first 5 minutes. In this initial short period it's a battle of only a few meters as both you and the fish struggle for control. If you don't win this initial tussle and get the fish swimming your way quickly, he'll slam you into the reef and it's all over, even with 2-3 meters of 150lbs leader. These fish have a habit of making anglers look foolish. I was using multi-coloured braid, so it was easy to see exactly how much line was being gained or lost during the fight. You could also see exactly how much line could be afforded to the fish in the early stages just after hook up. It's exciting stuff when you know you have only a few meters left before he delivers the knock out blow. In this style of fishing, you just have to hang tough and go toe to toe with the fish;.....I get excited just remembering what it was like! It's one of the best adrenaline rushes you can get when fishing. Awesome stuff.

Big red

While moving between fishing grounds, we decided to troll some deep diving lures. A couple of skirted lures on 50 wides and short stroker rods were sent out one side of the boat, then Jarrod, one of my mates I was fishing with, decided to stick out a huge deep diving lure on my Saltiga jig rod that we'd matched up with one of the new Black Magic BMX over head reels. I could feel charter operator Jack looking at us like a disappointed father thinking once again we we're fishing too lighter gear. Jarrod glanced up at Jack and just said 'What?! ....I've put a wire trace on'. Within about 100 meters of trolling, the lure on our jig rod got hammered and the Black Magic reel, running about 6kg of strike drag, hit overdrive. From the helm Jack yelled out 'That'll be a wahoo!'. For those who haven't seen the first run of a big wahoo, it really is something else. If there was ever a Maurice Green species equivalent of the ocean, it'd be wahoo. I just can't imagine anything keeping up with them over the first 100 meters. Jarrod grabbed the rod out of the stern rod holder and after loosing and gaining line for the next 20 minutes he finally had the big fish boat side. It's difficult to articulate just what a big wahoo looks like when he's right next to the boat. Normally, pictures you see of wahoo are taken well after they're landed and the fish has a solid silver colour. Not in the water however. They light up like a neon sign and have markings similar to a zebra, except black on silver. To a small tuna it would have to be the most frightening vision they could ever have. Imagine swimming around minding your own business them look up and seeing one of these torpedos bearing down on you at warp speed in full fancy dress costume. After we landed this first wahoo, we hooked 3 more in the space of about 20 minutes, landed one, released one and lost one. This isn't to say each time you head out trolling at Lord Howe it's going to be wahoo city, rather it's more that when these waters around the island fire they do it on all 8 cylinders.

Bruce Wallace with a nice kingfish

As I said, we planned to fish some land based spots during our stay and this was another reason I didn't want to over do it with gear. There's only so much tackle you can carry in and out when fishing off the rocks before you get completely stuffed. Also, the only mode of transport each of us had for the week was a mountain bike. It's hard enough cycling to rock ledges with a back pack full of camera gear, food, terminal tackle etc and a rod attached to the cross member on the bike frame without lugging around anything else. The land based fishing here really blew me away. When ever you fish anywhere new for the first time without somebody who knows the place, it takes a while, perhaps a few sessions, to get the place wired. Not at Lord Howe. Just find the water, get a live bait of some description (we were even using drummer at one stage) send it out and hold on. If you don't get a king hook up within the first few minutes you'll get a 20 odd kilo whaler take the live bait soon after. We landed kings off the rocks on each day and I must confess I am a real novice when it comes to LBG, but honestly it was hard to go wrong. I also had a couple of bust offs from some big kings in a memorable 40 minute session we did late one afternoon. As soon as we sent out a live bait that arvo it would get ambushed by gangs of hoods when it got more than 2 meters away from the ledge. I remember Jarrod summing it up when after one of these big kings busted me off his only comment was 'how good is this?' then we both cacked ourselves like a couple of kids who had just broken into a toy shop.

I suppose when you get down to it, most serious anglers love fishing areas that reward in spades when you apply yourself to a particular technique or species. This is what Lord Howe is all about. This is also why you don't need to over do it with fishing gear. Preparing for every possible angling scenario is a waste of time and effort. It's like going to buy a new pair of shoes. You see a pair you like, and then you go around to every other shop to see what they have only to come back to that first pair you saw and buy them. The same thing happens on fishing trips. Take all this gear; rods, reels, heaps of lures,..the full catastrophe and then end up using the same set up and tackle each day because guess what? It was the first thing that worked. You are bound to loose some stuff through attrition, but when was the last time you came back home and said ‘Gee I wish I hadn't run out of lures on that trip' or ‘If I'd only taken those 3 spare reels'. Now when I get ready for a trip, I spend most of my time checking that my fishing gear is in top condition rather than working out how much tackle I can fit in my luggage. As it turned out after fishing every day we were there, I used about a dozen hooks and swivels, 15 meters or so of leader, 3 deep water jigs and about half a dozen lures. I fished about as hard as I could for that time, caught a stack of fish and was buggered by the weeks end.