Having bought my first boat (Quintrex Bayhunter Caprice) during the summer, I was stoked to finally see the first decent fish on board on the weekend.

Struggling to find many chances to get on the water due to golf and football commitments on most weekends (priorities are wrong) I thought that monday of the long weekend was a good chance to get out on the water for our first try in the sound with a mate on board with me.

Having absolutely no idea where to look for fish i figured our best chance was to bite the bullet and get on the water nice and early before the sun came up as i had read that this was generally when snapper were most active.

We were the second boat in the water at point perron ramp at around 5:15am and in the sound not long after.

Not knowing where to head, i had read that Sulphur Bay could produce snapper so we decided to head there. The first time on the water at night was a new experience!

Not having looked at the charts before we left we realised once at Sulphur Bay that there were Navy waters that we shouldnt enter so we stayed just to the south of the boundary.

We anchored at first around 10 metres of water and burleyed up but just kept catching butter fish . I wassurprised at the size of hook they managed to take. After 20 minutes of catching these we got fed up and decided to pull up anchor and drift in from 12m of water to 6m of water. First couple of drifts kept producing butter fish and i was dissapointed knowing that i could have still been in bed.

The sun was now coming up and we decided to head a couple of hundred metres further south of the navy boundary and have another drift. First drift and the bait sat on the bottom for a minute without feeling any pesky little bites from butter fish which was a good sign. All of a sudden my reel started buzzing and i was on to something decent. I dont think i had the drag set tight enough to set the hook in the fishes mouth on my size 4000 reel and the fish spat the hook after the first run. Very dissapointed that i didnt get to see what was on the other end i spat the dummy only for my mate to hook up straight away. He was fishing much heavier gear than me and after a few minute fight he had the fish at the boat! a nice 66cm Pink in around 9m of water. As we were high fiving each other after thinking we were going to have no success, my other rod that was floating a mulie out the back got hit and before i could pick up the rod the hook was busted off probably due to a poor knot.

After a couple more drifts accross the same area with no luck, we quickly drifted over the weed beds picked up a few squid all be it quiet small ones compared to some that i had picked up around port kennedy and headed back to the ramp.

Very happy to finally have a decent fish on the boat even if i didnt catch it!

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