MY FIRST HORSE RIDE!

The weather had finally come good and being almost four weeks since our last dive - we just had to get out there!

Riley (16), Shawn (16) and myself (13) packed the boat the day before but we had one problem - the motor. It was broken by my brother going up the rivers for Barra. Luckily we had Riley who is pretty mechanically minded and he had it fixed in no time. The next morning we woke early so we could get the boat in before 5am and although the boat ramp was still dark, it didn’t stop us as we headed out to Olive Rock.
 
At first light and with a slight current running, we dropped the pick and all jumped in. We split up and I soon came across a decent Spangled Emperor but in my haste to pin the first fish of the day, I took a stupid shot and missed. I reloaded my 90cm Riffe Euro and swam to meet up with Riley who told me about a nice Gold Spot Cod swimming close. We both looked around for the cod but couldn’t find it. Gold spot cod are quite tasty but I knew we could find something better so we swam to a rock where there are usually a few nice trout.

Shortly after I came across Gold Spot Dart which swam under me and went into a hole. Normally these fish will hang around so I left it and checked the rock for more trout but didn’t see anything worth shooting.

Swimming a little further I noticed a nice cave which looked good for Jacks, so I dived down to take a look. My eyes took a second to adjust and as they focused, I was greeted with the sight of a good sized Mangrove Jack. I really wanted this fish.

Being a Far North Queensland Jack, it decided that I was a threat and by the time I had my gun positioned in the cave, the fish had made its escape and I’d lost my opportunity. I swam around for a while in the hope that it would show up again but it wasn’t to be.

Back at Olive Rock there seemed to be a lot of current running so we decided the safest option would be to drift and one of us go 'boaty'. Of course, being the youngest and the smallest I thought I would save any arguments and just be boat bitch as I knew there was no point in wasting time as we hadn’t really bagged many fish and it was time to spring into action.
 
Riley and Shawn dived together on the drift while I stayed in the boat watching them. Riley was using a 120 Riffe Euro and Shawn was using my Riffe.

It seemed like it was going off as there were hundreds of different types of Trevally and a lot of nice Mackerel around but being pretty dirty we only had around 6-8m vis so we decided to stick to the shallower water where there was a drop off down to around 14m with potential for some good fish.

Shawn shot a good sized 10kg Trevally and when I cruised over with the boat to grab it, he said the current wasn’t as strong as we first thought and it would be safe to anchor. After anchoring, I chucked some pilchards in to entice a few Mackerel our way and after retrieving my precious gun back off Shawn, I went over the side, keen to pin a some fish.

Even though there were Trevally everywhere, I had my heart set on a Spanish Mackerel and when Riley shot a small one around 80cm long, I went over to check it out.
 
By this stage Riley seemed to be getting bored and suggested we just hand feed the Trevally from the boat, but when I looked down, a big Spanish Mackerel flashed past my eye. It was swimming in nice and slowly so I slipped over the side and made sure I got nice and close. I lined him up and took the shot. This fish was bigger then anything I’d ever shot before and I managed to put a good holding shot through the top right hand side of the middle of its body.

The mackerel just stopped so I thought I’d stoned it, but I was wrong. It suddenly took off and I grabbed my floatline and let it feed through my fingers until it got to the float which I clung to.

The mackerel towed me into blue water and I started to freak out and accidentally let go of my float. The fish kept going so I just kept swimming after it until it finally made a turn back towards me. The fish was starting to tire so I knew I could start bringing it up and eventually managed to secure the massive fish. I was stoked and exhausted at the same time. I’d never experienced shooting a fish with that much power before and after bleeding it we took a few photo’s and then realised we'd have to cut the thing in half to fit it in the esky. This fish was a horse! Later, back at the mainland we got a measuring tape and scales. The fish weighed 20kg and 150cm.

Editors Note: Congratulations Joey for bagging your first beast! At DiversWorld we're especially excited seeing such a lot of great new talent coming up through the ranks and would be delighted to hear more adventures of other young divers exploring our world incredible.