FAD Trip

I took advantage of the good conditions on Saturday for my first trip out to the FADs.

We got up at 4am, in the water by 5:30 and at the Fremantle Sail Club FAD around 7 am. We couldn't find the thing at first, it wasn't where our plotter was telling us, but luckly there was another boat out there which we followed to it. I was surprised how fast the current moves out there. Without any wind, our boat was drifting at about 2 knots.

We could see the dollies swimming under the boat on the first pass and had a few follows on our soft plastics, but no bites initially. On the second pass my mate dropped a mullie over the side and managed to hook up to one.

On the pass after that I managed to hook onto one with my soft plastic.

There were lots of similar sized dollies in the water following the boat, but they weren't that interested in anything we threw at them. Lots of follows but no bites.

At about 9am they shut down completely and disappeared.

My friend also decided to drop a bait down 250 meters to the bottom to see what was there. After about 10 minutes of manually winding in, he pulled in this kifejaw.

After that we headed over to the club marine FAD, but there didn't seem to be any fish around that one.

We spent the rest of the day bottom bashing around rottnest without much luck. The weather was fantastic, no wind until about 3pm.

 

 

 

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Ashen's picture

Posts: 1042

Date Joined: 22/03/13

How big is your boat mate?

Mon, 2014-04-14 09:35

How big is your boat mate? Also how much fuel do you carry? I'm asking because I only have a 5.5m boat with an 80L inbuilt tank so not sure if that's enough to try out the fads.

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A fish in the hand is worth 10 in the water!

DTrain's picture

Posts: 486

Date Joined: 10/02/12

We've got a 6 meter ally with

Mon, 2014-04-14 09:40

We've got a 6 meter ally with 150L tank. We used about 120L of fuel for the whole day. It was 45L to get there and 45L back, the rest was used trolling and running around.

Ashen's picture

Posts: 1042

Date Joined: 22/03/13

 Thanks for the info mate.

Mon, 2014-04-14 10:36

 Thanks for the info mate. Your motor is a 130 etec so with my Johnson 150hp 2 stroke I'll need about 200 litres! That's a lot of Jerry cans to supplement the inbuilt tank! Haha

Nice dollies on your first time out there.

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A fish in the hand is worth 10 in the water!