Weather looked great on seabreeze and bom.gov was good considering they are usually pretty conservitave. Headed from Port Bouvard around 6 with my lovely wife Kelly & 4 keen customers, with 240 degrees on the compass I eased the big girl up to 2700rpm and a comfortable 20kts and sat back with my coffee contemplating the day ahead.

Some birds worked a bait school and the tuna broke the surface so we pulled up for a quick troll to get the day started. The small school soon went back into the depths and we dicided to continue empty handed.

Arrived at our destination in 42m (a couple of patches of ground that had been productive for us in the past) deployed the lines and quickly picked up a nice pinkie, black arse, kgw and a few other randoms. Good to see the other boats in the vicinity come over to say gday and see how we are going, usually doing a lap around our boat just out of 16oz sinker throwing range (b@#$%^&s). After a boat set up a drift straight in front of us we pulled up and moved.

A quick 15min steam put us at the 50m where a couple of long drifts to the south put a couple of dhuies in the esky and a couple released sucessfully with the release weight. Kelly did battle with something that looked real good, pulling hard with some short runs. Up comes a sting ray from the depths, a first for her and she described it as wierdest fighting thing she had caught.

Headed back in to 40m but a lot further south than before and caught a harliquin fish, queen snapper, kgw and released another undersize dhuie. Almost time to head in and and one of the customers informs me he had never caught a dhuie before and it was on his wish list. Moved to a spot we call DC (dhuie central) and dropped in for 1 last drift. Double hookup, the dhuie virgin knocked his over pretty quick and he was no longer dhuieless, a fine 56cm version was secsessfully released by kelly while I struggled with my beast. After a good fight the fish broke the surface and revealed itself as a fine speciman of a dhufish. The big fella pulled the scales down to 16kg and was shared between the two people that didnt have a dhufish in the esky.

 A good day on the water, happy customers and the skipper with the fish of the day!