After much to long out of the water, well a couple of weeks, i got to do some fishing today.

Launched from Mindarie at 6:30 and it was almost flat calm. We decided to do some trawling off the back side of 3 mile as the boat owners mate caught a 15Kg YFT there a few days ago. We headed north as our final destination was going to be north of Two Rocks. The sea was calm, the sunrise was great but the fish were elusive. There was no action on the surface and no bait schools on the sounder. After 1 hour of nothing we decided to pack in the trawling and headed to the 35m mark off TR.

There were a couple of boats out around that depth and stacks of cray pots so the signs were good for some dermersal action. Not today. The tide was wrong, the moon in the wrong phase, our tounges held wrong, whatever, we didnt even hook the normal bait stealing wrasse after 3 hours of trying everything and every spot we knew. Time to try something different.

My mate had taken his daughter out after school yesterday and hooked two thumping Pinkies in 5m off north Mindarie so we headed in to Linda reef to give it a go. On the way in at about 11:30 the birds started to fire up so we dropped the lures back out and chased around schools of little tuna/bonito and again struck out. We were still trying to keep positive but it looked like today was not going to be our day.

We sounded around the 15-12m mark and really couldnt see any fish so decided to drop on a few of the better looking holes. After an hour of still not getting anything both of us got hit at the same time. Skipper lost his and i pulled up a smaller than plate sized Pinkie. At last a fish.

We decided to anchor up current from the snapper spot and see if we could berly up some bigger specimens. With a nice burley pot over the side and some small chunks floating down current we dropped our lines. We had both downgraded our gear to our KG outfits by this time as we had lost hope of getting anything large. Within 2 min of lines hitting the bottom i loaded up and was on to a nice fish. After a good fight on the lighter gear we finally boated a 6Kg Dhuie. We landed another 2 Dhuies in the next 30min but both undersize. 

We switched spots to another nice hole we sounded up earlier and went the burley again. Within 40min we landed another 3 Dhuies with the keeper being 58cm (sorry no weight).

All in all it was a great day on the water with light winds and small seas but the fish were hard to raise. Stll a feed of Dhuie is a great ending.

Merv

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