The final stages of our Princess Charlotte Bay trip saw us fishing and snorkelling the ribbons reefs and surrounding areas.
Fishing the Ribbons is like stepping back in time for me as I spent many years here on the marlin boats.
After dropping off my mate Evatt in Cooktown, Karen and I headed out again for some couple time.
But not without any hitches!
The terminals were very dirty on the genset and nearly sent us home until I managed to fix it.
Sadly I checked them when the genset initially failed but never pulled it apart properly.
So we were halfway home before I troubleshooted the issue properly.
Hence we were fishing the lower Ribbons instead of the top Ribbons.
Sadly some big northerly’s sent us home with the blue boat taking on water.
Turns out the impeller off the end of the bilge pump had come away from the shaft, and I had to grind back the whole floor to access it.
Which we couldn’t do at sea.
Fishing the Ribbons.
The Ribbon Reefs are an underwater mountain range now covered in coral.
The fish life is spectacular and for the snorkelers the coral is sensational in many areas.
Fishing the Ribbons has been a enjoyable pastime of mine for many years.
Both in the marlin boat days and since.
We even popped over the shelf in Mood Swings and found a bait school with some big marlin on it.
One of them even raised up on the second pass. But we were definitely not equipped for tackling thousand pounders haha.
Our video Fishing the Ribbons will hopefully give you a taste of being there…
The usual suspects.
It’s not unusual fishing the Ribbons to tackle a big coral trout or cod.
We had a great session in the morning with several eating size trout plus some definitely over eating size.
Ciguatera is a debilitating toxin you can get if you eat too many sizable shallow reef fish.
I’ve had ciguatera and it wasn’t fun so we let all the big ones go.
Or sometimes they let themselves go like one last year at Mourilyan Harbour.
Gear and Tackle Used Fishing the Ribbons
To find out what gear we used on this trip, check out our gear and tackle cheat sheet
.
I hope you enjoyed our video Fishing the Ribbons.
If you’ve missed the beginning on the trip you can watch the whole adventure >> here.
We are planning our next trip in Mood Swings plus we shorter trips in the “blue boat“ so stay tuned.
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