Stanage Bay Trip 2022

Planning

I know this sounds funny but we started our trip in June even though we didn’t technically leave until late November… how is that possible you ask? Well there’s quite a bit of planning involved in a trip 11hrs away but in reality it takes a lot, lot longer than that. You see we need supplies, Stanage bay is a remote tiny town of about 80 people and 1 service station/pub/corner store all rolled into one. When your planning a trip for 12 blokes thes small corner store wont be prepared for us rocking into town and taking all their supplies. This means we need to get supplies from near by town Rockhampton and when I say near by, I mean over an hour away via 100kms of dirt road. So the plan was to drive from Coffs to Rocky in one day, load up at ALDI with all the groceries we needed for 12 blokes for 8 days and the make the 100km plus trip on the dirt road to Stanage Bay. This level of planning doesn’t happen at whim. First step find the best time of the year based on weather patterns then make contact with possible places for accommodation, second work out available boats and acquire a crew to fill each boat, third secure the necessary amount of fishing gear, fourth patiently wait until leave date. The last part was the hardest!

We decided on accommodation at the Stanage Bay Fishing Accommodation. The owner John was great to deal with and the house he let us was very accommodating for 12 passionate fisherman. The house was a two story dwelling with living areas in both, verandah overlooking the water, huge area for boats, fish cleaning station and more ice than you’d ever use. If your wanting to bring some fish home there is multiple freezers in each floor.

If you didn’t know, Stanage Bay is renowned for plus sized Mud Crabs but honestly that’s not why we were going there. Stanage Bay has a wide range of reef species and being so remote because of the dirt road, it isn’t fished as hard as other north Queensland coastal towns. Personally I was there to tick a few species off the list that aren’t available to me here in Coffs Harbour. One in particular was coral trout.

Day 1-3

Travel…travel and more travel. We left Coffs at 7 in the morning, we squeezed 3 blokes into the Isuzu and towed daynes Formosa past the big banana and up the highway towards Rockhampton. After missing a turn and ending up in the middle of Brisbane we continued until we drove past the big bull and landed in Rockhampton around 8pm. We grabbed some dinner and rolled the swags out and got a early night.

UP YO HERE

Day 4

We decided on accommodation at the Stanage Bay Fishing Accommodation. The owner John was great to deal with and the house he let us was very accommodating for 12 passionate fisherman. If you didn’t know, Stanage Bay is renowned for plus sized Mud Crabs but honestly that’s not why we were going there. Stanage Bay has a wide range of reef species and being so remote because of the dirt road, it isn’t fished as hard as other north Queensland coastal towns. Personally I was there to tick a few species off the list that aren’t available to me here in Coffs Harbour. One in particular was coral trout.

We started our trip in June even though we didn’t technically leave until late November… how is that possible you ask? Well there’s quite a bit of planning involved in a trip 13hrs away but in reality a lot a lot longer than that. You see we need supplies, Stanage bay is a remote tiny town of about 80 people and 1 service station/pub/corner store. This means we need to get supplies from near by town Rockhampton and when I say near by, I mean over an hour away via 100kms of dirt road. So the plan was to drive from Coffs to Rocky in one day, load up at ALDI with all the groceries we needed for 12 blokes for 8 days and the make the 100km plus trip on the dirt road to Stanage Bay. This level of planning doesn’t happen at whim. First step find the best time if year based on weather patterns and book accommodation, second work out available boats and acquire a crew to fill each boat, third secure the necessary amount of fishing gear, fourth patiently wait until leave date. The last part was the hardest!

Day 5

We decided on accommodation at the Stanage Bay Fishing Accommodation. The owner John was great to deal with and the house he let us was very accommodating for 12 passionate fisherman. If you didn’t know, Stanage Bay is renowned for plus sized Mud Crabs but honestly that’s not why we were going there. Stanage Bay has a wide range of reef species and being so remote because of the dirt road, it isn’t fished as hard as other north Queensland coastal towns. Personally I was there to tick a few species off the list that aren’t available to me here in Coffs Harbour. One in particular was coral trout.

Day 6

We decided on accommodation at the Stanage Bay Fishing Accommodation. The owner John was great to deal with and the house he let us was very accommodating for 12 passionate fisherman. If you didn’t know, Stanage Bay is renowned for plus sized Mud Crabs but honestly that’s not why we were going there. Stanage Bay has a wide range of reef species and being so remote because of the dirt road, it isn’t fished as hard as other north Queensland coastal towns. Personally I was there to tick a few species off the list that aren’t available to me here in Coffs Harbour. One in particular was coral trout.

Day 7

We decided on accommodation at the Stanage Bay Fishing Accommodation. The owner John was great to deal with and the house he let us was very accommodating for 12 passionate fisherman. If you didn’t know, Stanage Bay is renowned for plus sized Mud Crabs but honestly that’s not why we were going there. Stanage Bay has a wide range of reef species and being so remote because of the dirt road, it isn’t fished as hard as other north Queensland coastal towns. Personally I was there to tick a few species off the list that aren’t available to me here in Coffs Harbour. One in particular was coral trout.

Day 8-10

We decided on accommodation at the Stanage Bay Fishing Accommodation. The owner John was great to deal with and the house he let us was very accommodating for 12 passionate fisherman. If you didn’t know, Stanage Bay is renowned for plus sized Mud Crabs but honestly that’s not why we were going there. Stanage Bay has a wide range of reef species and being so remote because of the dirt road, it isn’t fished as hard as other north Queensland coastal towns. Personally I was there to tick a few species off the list that aren’t available to me here in Coffs Harbour. One in particular was coral trout.