Rick loves helicopters and even has a landing pad for his on top of his houseboat on the Gold Coast. So, it was no surprise, with a few hours to spare the day before their trip was to start that the boys were soon circling overhead KEKOA fishing out at Linden Bank among the fleet.
Rick made the most of the trip, his first north on the new KEKOA with Brendan, to hook up to his first, second, third, fourth and fifth black marlin’s ever mostly in the small to medium size. Meanwhile, Brendan took care of the big girls fighting two big fish in the 900lb range. The first fish did some spectacular jumps on the leader before we busted her off on the leader at the back of the boat. The second teased us on the underwater camera going through (and destroying) two baits before finally hooking up on the third.
This fish started off as a double header with another smaller fish for Rick (which he dispatched pretty quickly–he’s almost a pro now) while the big girl came back again and again on each new bait the boys put out on offer. Finally she was hooked on a sneaky strike on the scad and did some spectacular jumps for Dingo on the leader on a beautiful calm day.
If you haven’t already seen it, the footage is here.
Rick also had to put his engineering skills to work to fix the chair which was loosened on Brendan’s first big fish, and well and truly broken on Rick’s smaller one the next day (brand new chair I might add!) But after a quick consultation, the boys all had it back together, better than new in no time – and Rick brought the fish in from the covering board, no sweat.
The boys also had a lot of fun with the other gamefish (wahoo and dolphin fish among them) as well as swimming on the reef with the Maori Wrasse at North Opal. Another top trip!
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