Hi guys, there haven't been many reports of late and I though I would add one of mine from a couple of months ago. Unfortunately I haven't got anywhere near as much diving in as I would have hoped since moving to Gove, however, I did get the chance to head out to Truant Island about a fortnight ago.
Truant Island is about a 65km trip from Gove, fortunately the weather was particularly good and we were there in about an hour. To start off with we did a series of drift dives over a rock shelf around 8-12m, the current was strong and the vis a slightly hazy 6-8m, however the guys managed a cracker spanish of about 15kg, a big longnose and a 2 big jacks (photo below), I managed a small spanish of around 4kg as my first NT fish.
At the second spot we were hoping for a few bigger jacks hard up against some exposed rocks in anywhere from 2-10m of water, unfortunately we could not find any. We did, however, manage about a dozen coral trout and a couple of crays. I was pretty stoked after shooting my first trout so took that first photo, the novelty wore off fairly quickly though as there were just that many. The amount of fish life was incredible, there were reasonable sized GTs cruising around everywhere (estimated 10kg odd) and we were simply swimming over good coral trout after a while. There were lots of sharks including a couple of larger bullies, but thankfully they were behaving themselves.
The third spot would have to be one of the most beautiful spots I have ever dived, sandy bottom with patches of coral (I'll make sure I take my camera next time). There were quite a few turtles cruising around and heaps of fish. A couple of smaller spanish made an appearance and I did manage to scare the hell out of a hole full of jacks of around 5kg, unfortunately I couldn't get a shot with the 1.2m gun. We did manage a few fish, I got a smallish 4kg tusky and another big longnose was also added to the esky.
The last spot was incredible, a new virtually untouched shoal to the northeast. The water rises from around 35m up to 2m. There wasn't much in the way of reef fish, however, there were plenty of macks, GTs, queenies, etc. also a lot of milkfish. I managed a better mack of about 7kg, another mack slightly larger was also added to the esky.
It was a great day diving, certainly a different experience to vic swimming past countless great table fish. By the end of the day I managed the 2 spanish as well as half a dozen or so coral trout to 4kg, a tusky and a couple of painted crays. Hope to get back out there soon...
I will try to get hold of a few more photos from other cameras, these were the only decent ones I had on mine;
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