I got the opportunity to head out with Joe D on Saturday. We left from East Freo about 6.45 in the 5.4 trailcraft. Good little boat for its size, has a good shape to it and kept us very dry for most. We spotted a school of tuna just south of rotto and tried to work that for a few passes with no result. By the time we got to the wreck there was two charter boats and about 5 others spread out over the patch. The schools seemed to be all over the place and away from the wreck. It was worth really looking around looking for a school that started at the bottom and finished half way up. The sambos were very deep and we had a lot of trouble stopping them on our undergeared Penn outfits.

It was impressive to see the raw power of the sambos when hooked, that was until the men in grey showed up which in some cases was about ten seconds. As Ryan said, sharks on every drop. Over the day we had 12 hookups between the two of us with a lot of rest periods in between. It was interesting to watch everyone else and their various styles. After about an our or so the charte boats left and went further South. We decided to stay and try to work a school that was coming up a little higher than the others. It was really easy to tell the difference between the sambos and the Amberjacks. We definately had a few big Sambos take us to the bottom and give the leader a good work out before breaking.

After a few hours we were the only one left at the spot and were not tempted to follow the charter boats. Lucky, as about an hour later, thay all came back to where we were.

We were determined to land a fish each and worked hard on the higher schools. We were jigging on a different line to the charter boats and managed to finally land two amberjacks on the same drop. I nearly fell out of the boat when my feet slipped on the deck while trying to wrench the fish in a quickly as possible. Lucky for the rail or i would have been swimming. With both fish in the boat we felt pretty good as it happened right in front of the two charter boats. They would heve been pretty pissed i think as we did not see them land anything except a shark. They then moved closer to Rotto and stayed there for a while, hope they had some luck there.

The wind came in hard from the South and we called it a day.

Pictures are top to bottom: Dave with his first amber, Dave again, Joe D hooked to a large shark that we could not even budge and Joe with his amber. I must say, i was very impressed with the flesh of the amber on the BBQ with a bit of salt and pepper. We even had some sashimi. Very nice. I cooked it just like i would yellow fin, a third cooked, a third raw and a third cooked. Very moist and tasty. Fresh is of course the best you can get.

We had a good day out, only lost two jigs each and from what we saw, were one of the very few who got a whole fish to the boat. Thanks to Joe D who does a great job as skipper and thanks to all the guys who we spoke to out there, it was very relaxing. The arms and hands are very sore, a great sport and challenge. looking forward to doing more jigging when the dimersals re open.

See you out there soon.

Cheers

Dave