Nothing for me out of Hillarys yet except for a stuck pot. Will try to free it tomorrow with a bit more force. Today was bloody uncomfotable in 10m with the swell and the South Westerly.

Is anybody getting any out of Hillarys?

Whats the deal with asking for assistance to free a pot? Whats the going rate?

 7 for us today out from ocean reef.  Six whites and a red.  2 pots are stuck and one had been pulled and moved about 300m.

Cheers Randall.

Hopefull I will be able to pull at the pot from a different angle tomorrow when the swell is down.

If it is truly stuck I will send out an SOS to fellow FW'ers

hey randall

the pulled pot , which direction did it get moved in ??

didn't happen to be in the easterly direction did it ??

hezzy

 Best advice I ever got was extend the rope and tie it off at the bow and then reverse back. Has worked for me every time. 

But if all else fails, call the dude on gumtree and pay him $50. 

 Deckies are going to dive on them this weekend if they get a chance

 If I get none again tomorrow would you assume Im just unlucky or should I be trying something different, or just wait longer.

My pots are currently outside 3 mile about 1km to the south of the hole in the wall off Hillarys in 10m, on sand, just off some reef.

Any tips?

They are plenty heavy. steel base, jarrah and 10kg of ballast.

 Orange ruffy, with twin baskets.

Will PM ya Brad.... I dont fish out of there anymore but have a couple of good GPS coordinates I use to use that produced a fair bit

 Cheers Piggy

 In 20 kilo boxes

Do you reckon blue mackeral is betty than orange ruffy?

Went again this morning....donuts, and the other pot is still stuck.

 I reckon orange ruffy is great. Lasts longer than blue mackerel.  Something is not right if you are not getting crays.  They are on fire at the moment. 

 Brad, your too far out mate, come back to the 3 mile. right on the back ledge. If you can see in the water, put your pots about 5m off the back edge on the sand. the only thing your doing is your out too far during the walking phase.

We got 24 today in 4 pots.

Sorry brad, read your post again.

Just make sure your on the back of the 3 mile, about 5-10m off the back of the reef / weed.

Are there many pots around you? 2 of our pots litterally had others within 5-10m who had potted on top. I dont mind, we got our crays and they hadnt pulled our pots.

1 pot is on his lonesum! best performer the last 2 days, had 13 in it this morning.

 I'm only 2nm out in 10m and we got our limit this morning. 

As you know the 3 mile is pretty broken ground. You cant get in too close because of the breakers etc. All I have done is come in from the West, and when I start finding caves, overhangs and lumps I just back of a few metres and drop on the flat. The pot has silt and shells (not cray shells) when it comes up but no crays.

The pots are bloody heavy and take a bit to pull up. Is there the chance that the crays are swimming out on the way up?

 James service is still pretty dry, none from two today

Try the spots I gave ya Bradz you should get a few there

 Hi Piggy

I never received any PM from you.

Hey mate dont know why it didnt come through last night... see if it worked now?

 Cheers

 Went diving last Monday on 3 mile off Mindarie. All crays spotted were whites some freshly moulted. Crays were deep in the reef on 2nd dive, most in caves. Saw plenty of shells diving on the Saturday down off Freo way. Managed to snaffle a few still though

 Pots in today, hopefully smiling tomoz.

 Will be dropping pots this arvo, fingers crossed 

 Can anyone tell me if time of day when picking up the pots is crucial? I cant get there super early tomorrow to pick mine up so itl be around 10am. Is this too late? Do thr crays crawl back out when the sun comes up?

 I must have killed a black cat while walking under a ladder on Friday 13th.

Still no crays.

 mmm for all you cray gurus...

my pots wont go in till next saturday? will i miss this "whites run"

Brett

 22 today

still very quiet for us, 1st year potting so obviously a bit to learn,  

Broke the drought first crays for the season on the fathom ,7 size crays ,one undersize out of 2 pots nothing out of the deeper 2 pots ,5 whites 2 red .

 First time pulling my pots today out on ffb.Nothing but a dirty big port jackson in one pot and nothing in the other. The were new jarrah pots and the got wet for the first time 7days ago. 

What are peoples thoughts on how long is too long to leave them in before checking? Ideally id like to check daily but work/weather permitting.

Obviously there is always the chance someone has emptied them for me but is a pot full of crays a sitting duck for occys etc?

 I'm the biggest cray rookie out. But I'll offer some worthless advice to the other cray novices out there. If your getting no crays in a pot then move them, is the only way your gonna start catching. I sounded out some great looking ground and thought I was gonna strike it rich with crays, I was wrong. But after some valuable advice from a few good blokes on here I've started getting a few and things are slowly getting better. So move your pots around a bit and find those honey holes! Once you start getting a few then leave that pot where it is and you should get a few more, but don't be scared to experiment and move the other pots around. Worst case your gonna get 0 crays, but eventually your gonna pull up a full pot!

 We headed out this afternoon when i finally made it to the boat ramp coming back from mandurah...  f..king cycle races closing the freeway...

Bit crowded.  Five blokes, a dog, two dive tanks and fins and stuff for three  (one free diver).

Intention today was to clear three stuck pots.  One we knew was just a rope under a ledge and our free diver took care of that.  One other came free without diving, thanks to the northerly wind. 

The third, well that was smashed to pieces and all that was recovered was the front frame, the rope and floats.  The frame had hooked a ledge so it hadnt drifted.

The pot with the rope under the ledge had one big female, but she had an equally big tar spot, so back she went.

So we're  back to fishing with 5 pots now and hopefully six when one of the guys buys one this week.

Its interesting, Randall, you found a cray with tar spot at this stage of the cycle. I  was wondering about that when checking the whites today and I dont remember ever finding a white that has tar spot or the hairy legs. So I assumed that crays must do their thing first then shed shells? If thats the case and Randall has got one today with tar spot then maybe the run of whites is far from over? 

 Only managed one Cray this morning out back of Carnac, 1 lost to an occy. Not sure if it's just us but it seems slow out of woodies. spoke to couple of guys at the ramp and they only got 3

 Paul_86, great advice, a few tips

If you pull up a dounut, move

If your bait stinks, change it, also usually means you didnt get any crays and that spot is barron.

in the whites, you should be pulling daily, thats all they need.

remember in the shallows there are a lot of occy's, so if crays sit in pots for days on end they will get eaten.

Randall, get your pots off the reef mate. If your stuck your way too close all pots should be on sand now. :)

full moon is coming up, this could impact the whites for a few days.

 They can, however be tar spotted occasionally. This is actually the crayfish equivilant of rape, apparently, happens when a big red buck pins a white inside a pot, according the fisheries' researchers opinion. And this is how you will sometimes get the big red bucks inside a pot of whites, they are out for a good time. 

I see a lot of questions about " whites" on here, and what it means. if you were wondering, read on.

The white phase is a once-off in the lifecycle of the western rock lobster, they only do it once, around the time of their first maturity. I know the size of whites can vary a bit, from those annoying " just under " cackers to the big milk bottles, but this is really just a carapace range of about 7mm, which can be explained by different growth rates and individual variations in vigor. Their " walking" is their first major migration, governed by density and conditions at the time--they are just looking for food and shelter enough, away from the congestion of the inshore reef and all the other animals. Some just stay behind, you will see them slowly turning darker, until they go full red at the next moult. Some will travel vast distances -- after hitting the deep water on the edge of the shelf they will ride the currents , usually north, then fan out inshore looking for somewhere to live. Exactly how they decide to come further back in is very hard to gauge. I say " usually" north, but in years of very high density around the Perth area, they will turn south, and this is when you get the truly epic southern runs, and repopulation of your inshore areas down toward the Cape.  In the northern end of the fishery, they will go over the edge south of the Abrolhos, and ride the southerly tides way up--one year, the most diehard of the boats chasing them got almost to Exmouth. Catches were huge,mortality rates were high, the catch was dying in the tanks. I had a great run later that year off South Passasge, catching the ones that had peeled off and come in along the way. The best catches occur when the boats are on the migrating mass and the tide turns and comes from the north, it slows them right up and they feed. We are talking depths of 70-100 fathoms, or sometimes more.

Do you know that boats were very recently pulling big catches of whites north of Kalbarri? They apparently first turned up about 60 miles north, then spread further south. They were definitely whites, they had the worn-down tails and legs that these crays get, very distinctive. Catches were patchy, you were on them or not,and those crays had been travelling since January. Personally, I would put it down to the fact that the Big Bank area, north of the Abrolhos area, has been closed to fishing for years now as part of the breeding stock conservation effort, and it is now utterly choked with crays, and these ones had nowhere else to go, just kept wandering. I've seen this on a smaller scale, late March, catching them outside everyone else on the very patchy  ground north west of Kalbarri. Kept quiet about it, then a few days later the blokes further inside on the easier to work ground started picking them up. They were moving east, coming in from the deep water.

 Finally hit the scoreboard today. Only 1, but infinitely better than before.

6 whites from 4 pots this morning. 5 in one pot. have moved others to this vicinity. see what the morning brings. was packed at OR 5am this morning!

Well after years of crayfishing it seems my luck has run out.

Started this year's season a day after it opened with 4 pots and been going out every 2 to 3 days and so far our grand total is 14 crays, 7 Wobby's, and a truckload of PJ sharks.

Going out from Hillarys and have the devils off from Mullaloo point on the 3 mile reef in 15 - 20 meters, on the same ground I used to dive for crays.

Weve been moving the little buggers about a bit as well, but the funniest thing is we are yet to catch any undersize crays at all, most pulls are for empty pots.

Bait is Blue Mackrel and all pots have 23KG of Ballast (three big fishplates), Ive checked the pots over and come to the conclusion I must be jinxed.

I pretty sure they arent getting pulled as if they are these guys are dam good at getting the pots back where they started....

Hell I can remember putting the dingy in with the old man every two days at pinneroo point with no ramp back in the 70/80's and having to use the old inflateable roller (thank god we bought that).

Either the Crays just arent out off hillarys this year or something else is wrong......

AAARRRRGGGHHHHH

 Slow last year

 Last year I was pulling 35+ per pot off Mandurah (around this time), this year I'm struggling. Been sitting in 17m where I did well last year. Just moved them into 12m. Fingers crossed. What depths are guys doing well off Mandurah? 

both at the ramp and in the pots..... only got two.

hope others faired better. might move pots a little deeper after full moon.....

some do very well and others struggle ATM

Started a second eition to make it easier to navigate.

 Many years ago I used to use chickens, get them from a local egg farmer. Had some bad weather and could not get out for 4 days, when I finally did, pulled 1 pot and found an egg in the bait basket. Thinking some wanker had been out playing with my mind. On the way back realised it must have been in the chook. 

 Many years ago I used to use chickens, get them from a local egg farmer. Had some bad weather and could not get out for 4 days, when I finally did, pulled 1 pot and found an egg in the bait basket. Thinking some wanker had been out playing with my mind. On the way back realised it must have been in the chook.