Back to the cold cold wintery days of Perth after the warm sun of Exmouth.

Took #1 daughter out for a fish and found a nice patch of whiting to later use as bait for the big stuff. While we were drifting we were both watching the sounder and Rachel said "what's that" pointing to some striations on the sounder screen. "That's a patch of weed sweetie, its places like this we get King Gorge Whiting on the edges of this stuff" I replied.

No sooner had the weed patch gone from the screen I was on.

"This doesn't feel like a sand whiting" I blurted. Low and behold this lovely specimen came into view.

Not as big as some we catch in deeper waters but a great start to the day none the less.

We then moved out to some ground I fish a little wider and on the way out I noticed a nice rise on the sounder. It was near some other marks I had but definaitly new ground.

That's what I love about my Lowrance 37x it can plot a mark to the GPS by putting the cursor over the lump on the sounder.

We headed back over and set up a drift. I landed a sargeant baker whilst my daughter hooked up big time.

I was very proud as she fought the fish well, keeping an arc in the rod at all times and letting the fish run when it needed to.

After a great fight up surfaced a PB Baldchin Groper. One of (if not the) best tasting fsh in the ocean.

After a few high 5's and a big hug for dad I dutifully renamed the mark in my GPS as "Rachel's PB Baldie" and continued on towards the spots I had originally wanted to fish.

Whilst we didn't get too many big fish, we were entertained most of the day with a few small Dhufish that we carefully returned using a release weight.

On a past trip my daughter had caught a huge cuttlefish, but it took me too long to get the net (too busy filming it all for the magazione) that we lost it boatside...she never forgave me for that and so when she hooked up to something that was surging and quite heavy we called it early for a cuttlefish and readied the net.

As it neared the boat all I got was abuse from the daughter and threats of what would happen if I stuffed up the net job this time.
Thankfully I managed to get it onboard without any ink and it filled our bait esky nicely (didnt want to put it in with the other fish for fear of an ink bath). Another PB for Rachel.

We started heading back in and hit a few more marks and wouldn't you know it I hook a cuttlefish too. This one was a bit bigger though and after some banter about netting it, the daughter managed to scoop it up and into the esky.

We headed home after a great day on the water. I had tried to use the scaling bag on the smaller one to remove the skin but all it did was scuff it so it wasn't photogenic being in several pieces. So we took it in turns to hold up the big one for the camera.


Its great seeing the young ones catch something decent, and good to have some quality time with a teenager who's otherwise only interested in shopping and girly things.

Get your kids into fishing and it breaks down all the barriers.

PS: Anyone have any good recipe's for cuttlefish. I have cleaned the mantles and they are roughly 1.5cm thick so need some advice on cooking as they are obviously a little bit different from squid.