Got lucky
Decided that yesterday was the day to try our luck out wide. We got down to Palm Beach Jetty at about 6:30am. My intention was to basically head due West from Point Perron and hopefully have a sound in a couple of hundred metres of water. But we found that there was short choppy waves as soon as we got out from the marker on the reef so I had changed my mind and decided to have a fish past the Five Fathom Bank as it was going to be an uncomfortable drive out. We were catching a few Break Sea Cod with two that were worth keeping and also a Harliquin. I started to head over to Rottnest Island way and got to the 40's to drop another line. Picked up a Dhu that was a centimeter under so that went back to the depths under it's own steam. At this stage the water seemed to have calmed down a fair bit and my uncle wanted to try out deep again. Looked on the charts and wanted to try west of Rottnest where all the contours came in close to each other but when we got out there after a 50 minute drive, we found a couple of boats already in the area so I had to slow down to pick up a clear bottom and started to slowly drive South to head away from the other boats. Picked up a few too many green eyed sharks and then on my sounder, I saw the bottom as an echo and with another faint echo showing the ground leading away underneath the main echo but it was very faint. Still trying to work out the sounder but we would drift over the ground I marked with no luck but at the end of one of the drifts, my uncle pulls up a Red Snapper. I couldn't see anything on the bottom but we did the drift again and my uncle catches a small cod. Our boat was in one spot but I don't know where the baits were as we had a little bit of long lining going on. Then after a few more drifts he caught another larger one. My uncle and I were fishing with electric reels while my other mate just chilled out on the chair and working the landing net when a fish was pulled up. We called it quits as it was a long drive back in and I wanted to make the trip back in while it was still calm and the wind was supposed to have already picked up according to the forecast. I was stoked as it stayed calm the whole way home. We were fishing in 290-350 metres of water.
.thumbnail.jpg "Robinson sea bream - Jeffo")
meglodon
Posts: 5981
Date Joined: 17/06/10
Well done
Some good fish there, that's a long long way down how much line did you have on the reel.
Fraser 5.25
Posts: 122
Date Joined: 25/07/11
I think I have 900 odd
I think I have 900 odd metres on my reel and my uncle has 1250 metres on his. He had the saltiga boat braid which is thinner than mine I think.
outdoinit
Posts: 1009
Date Joined: 05/10/12
350 mtrs, that is a bloody long way down
great to see you had success from a long trip out..
I've spent half my life fishing.. The other half I have wasted..
Fraser 5.25
Posts: 122
Date Joined: 25/07/11
At one stage I think the
At one stage I think the line counter on my uncle's reel was over 400 metres but the depth on the finder was 340. When we dropped our baits down, they would fly down to about 110 metres and then slow down before speeding down again. At some points the baits would almost stop but there was some big swells rolling through and we had some big baits on too. It took while to get back in and we were doing 17-20knots. Saw a few whales on the trip home as well.
Mattyb84
Posts: 388
Date Joined: 28/12/12
Nice work mate I'm still yet
Nice work mate I'm still yet to find the elusive cod.
Pgfc member
Auslobster
Posts: 1901
Date Joined: 03/05/08
Good report!
I'm guessing it was your first crack at the super deep stuff? What sort of sounder/transducer do you have? This is the sort of post that encourages others to give it a bash!
Fraser 5.25
Posts: 122
Date Joined: 25/07/11
I have been out twice in my
I have been out twice in my uncle's boat but down in Mandurah way. We kept catching snapper and nothing else and that was in 210 metre mark. But this is the first time in my boat and the more interesting contours seem closer to land from Point Perron way. I have got a Garmin GPSMAP 820XS combo and it was the second time it has been used. It's got the standard HDID (whatever that means) and I think it's max output is 600w. The next time I get out, I will hopefully play with the settings to see if I get a better bottom echo at a quicker speed. I've tried to muck around with the simulator at home but unfortunately I can't select the depth of simulation to see the effects of changing settings. It simulates at 10 metres and not 200m. And Matty, it was pure ass that we got the fish. Like I said, I saw the ground I wanted to drift over but I don't know if my bait was hitting the mark. Must be something around there. One day I will get the 1kW transducer but have to put save some cash.