I had been checking the weather overnight and saw the wind had dropped away from the forecast around midnight and looking at the beach cams this morning it was looking like a fish might be possible. I pinged MickC to see what he was up to and he was thinking the same thing so a plan was hatched. We left Hilarys about 1:30pm and the ramp was a pretty lonely place.

We headed out About 2 miles to a spot we have explored before inside the reefs and we had a look around for another lump and see if we could get that firing. We initially caught a couple of small pinks and then it went completely dead. We had drifted off the spot a little as the anchor was dragging in the confused conditions. Left over swell, some rebound swell and the current, all had the boat moving around a bit.

We decided to move near a place that has worked for inshore pinks before but found a new lump to try. Again, a couple of small fish but the sounder was at least looking better than the other spot. We berleyed and cubed and threw every combination of bait out we could think of.

Then mick remembered he had one of his ShoreCatch combo berley packs in the esky so at about 4:30 it went into the water in it's self contained onion bag. The cloud of berley and the slick produced was sensational. The mulie shred created an instant slick and got a lot of berley into the water quickly, and then the fish based berley kept the trail going for about 90 minutes.

I landed a small pinky, and then in almost frustration I put a combo of squid, mulie, skippy and bonito on the hook and sent it down. Combo berley pack and combo bait seemed to do the trick and after the determined fish had 5 goes at getting hooked, this 55cm pinky came over the side.

We were on the board. The ground we were fishing was really rugged and we both lost a few rigs to the reef. Persitence paid off though and using the smallest weight I could to get the bait down but not get wedged into the reef and I was on to another fish. This one was the twin of the first one and it too was 55cm and into the ice it went.

We were only in 10 metres of water, so I sent down another bait and a little while later I was on to number 3 for the night. This one was sent back very healthy and it swam off strong. Tripplets!

Now I have had to sit and watch Mick boat a number of pinks in my time and sometimes he is throwing them back and I haven't even had one to take home so I was only feeling 'slightly' guilty that he hadn't caught one. I convinced him to match the berley and send a smorgasboard bait down to the bottom. Not long afterwards, and on his tiny Gomoku rod, he was on. This fish peeled line from his little outfit and I was sure he would get bricked. Some fine angling saw a much larger model come into the net (I had a 20 tries to net it!) and after a quick photo it was also sent back to the reef to play again another day. Mick still had a freezer full of reef fish from the Abrolhos trip he went on recently so there was no need to kill this one.

He was pleased with both the fish and the release I think. Once it started to rain we decided to pull up stumps and head in.

While it was hard trying to find the right combinations to make it work today, persistence and doing the right things at the right times really made the catches a bit more special. We were back at the ramp before 7pm and glad to get somewhere warm.

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