So after Rona did its best to mess up Easter, i decided to book Friday off and with the young bloke recently adding a trip to the fads to his bucket list, we checked the forecast and decided to have a go. 

Problem was that I made this mistake of trusting a northerly wouldnt mess things up too much.....
So after launching at ~0830, we headed over to the dog beach and picked up a couple of squid before heading out to the channel to catch some bait. The northerly had created a bit of slop so we moved to the lee side of Mewstone and quickly got some herring before heading towards Rotto via Hugall Passage.

In the lee of Rotto, it was fairly decent so we hugged the beach having a bit of an explore of some spots we hadnt seen before hitting West End at around 1030 and agreeing to head out. Well it was shit. THere seemed to be more SW swell than planned (was .6), there was a bit of north westerly swell as well as a chop from the north east with the occasional three way wave combining to something that was steap and higher than the boat. Surely this was just at the cape, so we kept pushing out to the waypoint I had for the Club Marine fad. We got about 1.5 miles off the cape before the sounder decided to be a knob and lose bottom so we turned around so it could re-callibrate itself before going back again....
After 45 or so minutes doing anywhere from 10-15 knots including throwing a couple of lures out the back for the last 1.5 miles, we got to where it should be to find nothing.....no mark...no signs of a mark and no other boats. 
On the horizion, I could see another boat so we headed towards them thinking they were on it and I had just stuffed up but it turns out they were looking for it two.

With the daughter feeling less than average, the wife in a similar spot, we turned back to rotto and spent the next 50 minutes going as slow as 13 knots towards the island. The boat would surf only to slam into a nw/ne wave so it was a case of having to slow the boat down.

In that time, the breeze had died to nearly nothing but it was just misrable so we headed into Salmon Bay at Rotto for some michilin 5 star two minute noodles.....

After lunch, we headed over to Parker Point for a swim and chill out because dad (me) was starting to lose his shit at the number of complaints coming from the small people. 

After a swim kayak and more of a feed, we headed back out south west of PP looking at some of our waypoints. Out on the 40m line, we found a bit of a showing on the sounder on relatively flat ground so we dropped baits. 

As soon as the baits hit the bottom, both rods bent over. I grabbed one and Blake (little man) grabbed the other. I ripped mine up which turned out to be a small snapper while Blake was fighting with somehting else which, after a few minutes and a couple of runs, turned into a 550mm mulloway. He was super chuffed.

Over the next 10 or so drifts, we managed 3 snapper, a decent sea sweep which we kept, a bonito (from the bottom) which my daughter wound up after a hell of a fight. 

We spent 45 minutes on that spot and had a hit each drift with one bust off and a couple of dropped fish on the way up. 

With the sun getting lower, we pointed to Garden Island and with the conditions being fairly decent, we sat on 25 knots most of the way in, pulling up a mooring at GI to have tea before getting back to the ramp at about 1820. 

Still yet to get a sized Pinky but we are clearly on the right ground and very happy to see my kids getting fish up that I have never seen. 

Mulloway and Sea Sweep were delicious

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