Crazy Sunshine Coast Topwater Snapper

Today was just another quick trip out on our local in close to try and get a couple of Spanish on topwater, it was actually our last trip in the Seafox Viper as well before handing her back and upgrading to the beast of a commander.. it was blowing a consistent 20knots as it had been for the previous few weeks but when there’s so much ground so close, a bit of wind doesn’t stop us. We were fishing this spot the day before and I had a massive pack of fish up on my FCL220 sticky… I knew they weren’t Spanish because they don’t muck around at all, these fish nosed my lure all the way to the boat where I could finally see them, Ajs and some big red shapes which I was too scared to call for snaps at the time! A few minutes later, I turn to Benny and say “I swear they were snapper on me then”.. this thought was brushed off by both of us pretty quickly, and kept fishing…

Back to the following day, we were back at this spot, the last trip in the viper and we were keen to make it a special last trip.. 1 hour in and we’ve missed a couple of air-striking Spanish and got a little GT.. I bomb a cast out max distance with the 20knots behind me, a couple sweeps in with the FCL and I come tight.. we didn’t see anything due to the messy ocean but it was fighting weird, no runs, just a few head shakes, I was calling trout or something small foul hooked.. too our amazement, we see a flash of red a couple of metres down.. safe to say from this point, we didn’t muck around, the FCL surface lure crunching snapper was in the boat and the boys are going wild! 

It was definitely a moment we won’t forget or ever stop talking about, we joked that I was retiring from fishing at this point. This is something I seriously always spoke of and dreamed about since I saw Troy Mariens snapper on a popper many moons ago.