Arriving back in Perth on Friday night after a couple of days on site I decided to check whether there was a slight chance for good weather during the weekend.  To my "shock" Saturday was showing up as a relatively good day with a small swell and mild winds.  I say "shock" as for most of this year the weather has been downright awful during the weekends - the only time that we have to get out on the water.  Knowing that my preparation for an outing takes at least three hours, Gail and I made a call to launch sometime during the late morning on Saturday.  Willyweather also indicated that the wind would be dropping off toward the afternoon.

The next morning it did not take too long to set up the fishing gear, tie traces, check the boat, set-up the GoPros, refuel and buy bait.  After all the necessary pre-work we made our way to Woodman Point and by 11:00 were on the water heading off to Rotto.  It took about an hour to get to our favourite area and after confirming some serious arcs on the Raymarine we dropped the pick.  It was only after I dropped the anchor that I realised that there was a substantial current pushing through, so much so that the marine exclusion zone marker in the distance was leaning over to a point of being almost horizontal to the water.  This did not put us off as we had caught some good fish in these conditions in the past.  My understanding of these conditions is that the smaller fish find it difficult to hang around in the heavier current and therefore the bigger fish are more available - my theory anyway.

We introduced generous amounts of burley into the swim and after an hour Gail landed the first fish of the day - a small shark which was not really on our target list.  Half an hour later I landed a snapper of 71cm and as I was fighting the fish Gail hooked into the second snapper which ended up measuring 76cm.  For the next two and a half hours we landed a further two sharks (one of about 1.5m), Gail a good pinkie of 81cm and my top fish of the day - a YTK stretching the tape to 107cm.  During this time we were reefed no less than five times by what I believe were larger YTKs.  I introduced the heavier gear (50lb mono) which did not even get a glance.  Goes to show that lighter gear gets the better hook ups most of the time.  By 16:00 we decided to call it a day as we made our way back before we lost the light for the day.

The highlight of the day for Gail and I was seeing whales breaching and even having one pop up close to the boat to say hello.  Another day in Perth Paradise.

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https://youtu.be/dcfwKsgUhQI

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