I hadn’t been out for a few months due to weather and work. Decided to hit my favourite spot off scarbs on the 3 mile, targeting a feed of skippy. Normally if there are bait fish around and you keep your eyes open there is a chance of tuna and YTK’s. Last year this time was great for everything and with the reports id read I was hopeful of a good feed. Well the easterlies were stronger than expected, creating quite sloppy conditions. The skippy never really turned up but managed 4 good ones up to 40cm and lost a few. Had some ytk’s scooting about the boat but they weren’t interested in what I had and buggered of pretty quickly!. Anyways after 3 hrs or so I decided to chug back to the marina and keep my eyes open for any surface activity. This often is very productive.
I got all the way back seeing nothing so was a bit dejected but decided to clean the boat up a bit before going in. Anyway, I had 2 rods rigged up with Mullies so decided to hurl them over and just drift with the sea breeze while cleaning. I wasn’t far from a bit of reef but would quickly blow away so had heaps of room.
So in 7-8m of very unexciting looking country, minor reef and sea grass mainly I started scrubbing away. 1 min later my bigger set up goes ballistic. I grab the rod and lean into what is clearly a good fish. Sambo I thought and gut stuck into it. Several screeching runs which was fantastic.
Not caring too much about losing it I started getting stuck into it and bringing it back to the boat when it suddenly occurred to me the other rod was out and if there’s one bloody sambo there are probably a few, so I glanced out the back of the boat to where my unweighted bait was almost dragging on the surface in the strong sou’wester. A couple of large dark shapes were whistling around but couldn’t really see them clearly. Good large fish tho. Shit I thought, as the that setup was only 4-8kg rod and 15lb braid and wouldn’t deal well with one of those cranky buggers in the rod holder…and of course the rod went off, big long run.
Heres the funny bit, I almost had the first fish to the boat such that I could see it near the bottom. Just a good dark fish, bit of flash. Sweet I thought. Its knackered ill chuck it in a rod holder and save my light rod from certain disaster. So I did this and stared playing the 2nd fish. It seemed much stronger but was hard to tell on the lighter gear. So 5 MINs later, I look down at the first fish as I was just getting control of the 2nd one and it rolled. I thought gee, that’s odd looking what the hell is it. So reached over and did a few winds on the reel. You can imagine my surprise as a 4kg (70cm) pinky slowly appeared out of the depths. Holy shit… mayhem. Grabbed the net, got it in the boat while still playing the 2nd fish. Couldn’t believe I had let it flop around for 5 mins while playing the other fish.
At this stage I was still reasonably sure the 2nd was a sambo after thinking that’s what I saw whistling around out the back, pec fins stuck out in my mind in the snap shot I saw but now wasn’t so sure!
After all of a sudden being a bit more gentle and nursed the 2nd fish to the boat and was again stoked to see a second much larger snapper (6.5kg 80cm) finally come to the boat after some scorching long runs. No head shakes….none. just long runs and aggressive fighting. Netted that and sat there and looked about drifting over open sand in 6-7m by now.
It was 12 noon on the dot, on the 38 degree day we had Thursday week ago. How’s that for bloody tinny. Some days it just all happens hey?

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