Bad equipment ,poor fishing value and exaggerated fish reports

So you may be wondering why is the blog titled "What a Croc"????? Well here goes.

I am very fortunate to fish most weeks if not at least a few times every month . I understand fishing is not always catching . I also understand that sometimes the fishing is just OFF!!!
What I don't have time for is false/misleading catch reports and bad equipment .

Before heading down to Crocodile Bay I went to the trouble of phoning Tod Stanley the resort's fishing director and specifically asked him if it would be worth my while to bring my popper fishing gear as I wanted to fish for Rooster fish on a popper. .. Oh no he said we have all the necessary gear and our inshore specialist Anthony will take care of you ..
Upon arrival I couldn't wait to fish inshore my first day. I headed down to the dock and met Anthony the "Inshore Specialist" . Anthony is the nicest person you would ever want to meet and so is his Mother who also works at the resort.
I got on board the inshore boat and immediately started to eye the fishing gear . What i was looking for was any kind of popper rod with some backbone and a decent reel. What i was given was a badly maintained old reel with old line . Personally I would have thrown in the trash years ago. The rod was also in my mind a piece of junk .There was obviously no back up equipment if this equipment had issues. I always take 3 rods and reels[shimano stellas] with me when serious popper fishing with new braid and a few spare spools on hand..

Ok so this was what I had to deal with . I figured I better make the best of is as there were no tackle shops around... I asked Anthony what we had for lures and it was minimal to say the least. So bad equipment , bad line and no lure selection . Not exactly what I would expect from a world class fishing resort..
If you choose to go to Croc for inshore fishing take your own gear and don't listen to Tod Stanley....

It seemed that each day there was a boat breakdown of some sort. At least when the inshore boat broke down they didnt want to risk taking it out and found another boat for me right away...

As always after fishing the fishermen would gather at the bar to discuss their catch , or in this case drown their sorrows. We were all amazed to see that the catch board from the day had a column for "hook ups". After talking together we all agreed that some of these "hook ups" were actually fish sitings and not all actual hooked fish ..It obviously sounds better if the board shows that a client was 1 for 5 .. than if it said "caught 1 fish and saw 4 which maybe only came up to take a look at the baits or kind of swirled near a popper"???


Personally I only keep track of fish which I catch, not the lost fish, hook ups or fish sitings..LOL

It became obvious that I was also not the only last minute guest . Two other groups of fishermen had made a last minute decision and flown down at the same time. We were all having a poor fishing week and wondered why did we all rushed down to Croc bay ... Then it dawned on us as we all scrabbled for our Blackberrys and read TOD STANLEY's fishing reports for the prior month. The fishing in his reports sounded great BUT it really depended on how you read the report.All I can say is READ BETWEEN THE LINES WHEN READING MR STANLEY'S REPORTS ...

I have tried to access the reports from that same time period but they are no longer available for 2010 so I cannot get any exact quotes . Up to 2009 and 2011, 2012 are there but not the ones I based my fishing trip decision on.. I am in no way calling Tod Stanley a liar just that he is quite selective in what he writes .

For example he might say " every family caught bill fish Christmas week " it was a fantastic holiday" .. So if 5 families caught 1 bill fish each in 6 days of fishing that's 30 fishing days and only 5 fish caught ....yes they may have had a great holiday but for 5 boats of serious fisherman 5 fish in one week would not be good . READ BETWEEN THE LINES..

The reports from the actual week i was there went up the next month and again you would think that everyone caught the fish of their dreams and lots of them ...




I think that Crocodile Bay is a high end family resort in a beautiful area of the world. I dont however think that it is a place that a serious group of fisherman should go for a fishing only holiday ... My suggestion is that if the fishing is really that good that Croc Bay show more "RECENT" catches in their monthly fishing reports.
A good example a reel report would be the monthly fishing report from a place I visit in Thailand called Gillhams fishing resort..www.gillhamsfishingresorts.com

Also keep an eye out for the latest fishing fiction from Tod Stanley in your local book shops:).

"Bright orange cubera snapper hover just below the slick surface like a field strewn with huge Halloween pumpkins. An angler tosses a lively blue runner over the side and the nervous bait races back to the boat.

Like a huge fireball, a cubera explodes on the surface and throws water in every direction. Line screams off the reel. Even the blister raised on the thumb, as extra pressure is applied to the drag, is not enough. The snapper's power is too much and it escapes into a rocky cavern below. The fisherman is left with the lasting memory of having a runaway freight train on the end of his line."

Could it have been , the old line?? the bad reel or maybe the poor drag setting ????
Even in Tod"s Creative writing direct from the Croc website the fish ultimately gets away .