There’s something about catching a red fish that gets the adrenaline pumping – whether it be mangrove jacks, scarlet sea perch or paddle tail snapper, red bass, flame tail snapper or, the tastiest of the lot, the red emperor.
To the critics out there, I get you. All these fish, except the red bass, are awesome eating. But the red emperor is in a class of its own. For those wondering ‘What’s wrong with the red bass?’ the answer is a little thing called ciguatera. Most anglers who fish the tropics know to stay away from red bass to avoid ciguatera poisoning. The effects of ciguatera poisoning can last for a long time: hot feels cold, cold feels hot, aches and pains, fatigue – the list of traumatic pain and discomfort rolls on.
It does get confusing when you travel and fish throughout the Pacific Islands because the locals love to eat red bass. Still – it’s not for me.
Recently on our show ‘Step Outside with Paul Burt’, seen every day of the week on 7Mate, we aired a segment featuring the Red Emperor, 70 kilometres northeast of Rainbow Beach and about 40 kilometres east of Fraser Island.
Normally, for a trip like this, we would spend a couple of days chasing other species, and exploring the surrounds, to showcase to our viewers. But this trip was a little different. The original plan ‘went out the window’ when I was invited to chase this delicacy of the ocean with an old skipper mate of mine, Greg Pearce, from Double Island Point Fishing Charters.
Many moons ago I spent my time skippering charter boats off the Gold and Tweed Coasts, and Greg was a skipper for another charter company. Man could this guy fish! It was like he could smell fish on the bottom of the ocean in 120 metres of water. He was so good that even birds would follow him. So, fast forward 20 years, when the opportunity arose to fish with him again, there was no way I was going to let it pass.
Having some idea of weather, and clearly Greg did as well, I knew we had literally one day of calm ocean, between a squeeze from a pressure trough that was passing over and another high-pressure system moving through the far south. We knew that those conditions typically bring a southeast trade wind up the east coast and, with that, comes swell.
Greg wanted me and our camera crew to meet him at 4:30 am the next day, which was only 12 hours later. So, with a ‘kind of a plan’ in place, we had the car packed and left at midnight, from the Gold Coast, planning to arrive at Rainbow Beach at 4:15 am.
Fortunately, the showers and wind from the trough had passed, leaving fog and cool temperatures settling in behind it. When we made the turn off at Gympie, it seemed like we were driving through a thick bank of cloud, a good indication that the weather was going to be pretty bloody good!
We arrived at the marina nice and early, and it was still dark and still cold. The next part of the journey was going to take a couple of hours, first steaming out through the notorious Wide Bay Bar, which is hell scary at night, let me assure you, then sailing for an hour and a half northeast, halfway up off the coast of Fraser Island.
Greg’s boat, to put it simply, is a weapon. It’s a boat to be proud of – a rig sent from the fishing gods to a fishing god – which made us feel super comfortable whilst travelling during those first couple of hours of darkness.
When we arrived at the spot, the lines, knots and rigs were tied, and bait had been de-frosted, the sounder lit up with pinnacles and drop offs, ledges and bait balls, and arches that depicted big fish down below.
Our gear consisted of 15-24 kilogram (or 30-50 pound) Shimano overhead and spin reel combos. All rods were 5’6”, reels spooled with 50lb braid, and the leader was 37-kilogram (or 80-pound) Black Magic tough trace. One set of ganged 8/0 in a pattern of 7766 Mustads tied to an 8-foot single-strand paternoster leader, with a pound of lead on the bottom, was all we needed. For the bait, we used a large whole squid. One that, if you didn’t catch a fish on, you’d take home to feed the family. The bait was huge, and we were here to catch huge fish!
Greg didn’t opt for the smaller rods – he walked out of his cabin with a nearly 8-foot rod, spooled with heavy braid and a heavy leader. He didn’t say too much except, “Give that a go”.
There was no time to waste as the bottom was passing by quickly due to the current. Like the weather, we only had a short period of time to work. Once the boat stopped, you instantly had to get the bait straight down to the fish, hopefully get their attention, then get the fish to bite, then hopefully hook them up, before winding up and driving the boat back over the grounds to do another drift.
The second drift saw Greg baiting up his hooks whilst driving back up over the reef. We stopped and the lines went straight over the side. Within what seemed like a few seconds, Greg’s rod arched over, bending halfway down to the reel seat, drag trying to release line off the spool, and I remember his words of “They’re down there”.
With some handy tips from the maestro himself, we spent the next couple of hours catching fish after fish and, with the cameras rolling, we captured endless moments of seeing big red fish coming up from the depths. Some were sharked on the way up and others we literally couldn’t get off the bottom. By 5 pm we were done. We’d caught a variety of species and made our way back towards the notorious Wide Bay Bar, before crossing – again at night – and eventually reaching the marina at 7:30 pm.
Watch Paul every weekend on 7Mate as they Step Outside. www. stepoutside.com.au
Published in print October-December 2022
