G'day all, behaved ourselves on new years eve so we managed to hit the water at a reasonable hour on  new years day with a clear head. The breeze was forecast to come up a bit around lunchtime, so we headed out behind Carnac Island. Tried a bit of trolling to get some herring for livies on the way out but very little action, so we proceeded out to the bank and found a nice looking patch of ground and dropped the baits down. Wasn't long before the first blackarse was on the deck, a feisty specimen of around 12cm in length (not sure if that's a FW record for the smallest blackarse to ever swallow a 4/0 hook?) Quckly returned to hopefully come back in a few years time.

Pretty soon the decky was adding to the burley (conditions were excellent, he is just soft as) and I managed a couple of nice blackarse around the 35-38cm mark, and a good size skippy. The deckie was spewing with increasing frequency and was considering invoking the mercy rule (knowing full well that he would have to forever wear the "panties of shame") until something put a nice bend in his little spin outfit. A brief struggle later and a small 50cm YTK was on board for a quick photo before swimming away strongly. The decky now reckoned he was feeling much better. Decided to head back in as the girls back home were getting impatient, and the breeze had just shifted around. Stopped at GI for a quick visit, and then headed back to the ramp. This is where the fun started!

For some reason, instead of launching at the usual ramps, we thought we would give Wells park a go. No problems for the launch (except for the numpty land based fishers who insist in parking their cars ON THE RAMP, not in the carpark 20m away - GRRRR!) but the retrieve was something else. The SW wind had fairly come up by now and the trip in from GI was fairly slow & bumpy. Got to the ramp (for those who are not familiar, it's an old concrete ramp with potholes, no jetty and it faces straight into a SW breeze, with no protection) and there was even more numpties parked at the top of the ramp! The waves and wind were making it quite tricky, so had to drop the decky off in deep water to fetch the trailer. As he's off getting the car, I'm thinking "we should head round to palm beach, cos this is nuts in this wind & chop". Eventually the parked cars are avoided and the trailer is on the ramp, I line up the boat and hope for the best. Decky catches the bow, hooks on the the strap and starts winching like crazy, I'm over the side keeping the back end straight, and 30 seconds later the car is heading back up the ramp. We both looked at each other in amazement, not believeing that it didn't go pear shaped. One last manouver past the numpty brigade and we were on our way home.

Fillets went down a treat for dinner that night, and great memories of the retrieve that could have gone so wrong, but didn't. Don't think I'll use that ramp again in summer...

Thanks for reading,

BD.

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