A bit late posting this report as I have been installing the shop graphics, but a bit more about that in a subsequent post.

Headed out early Monday morning with Dean and Wal to give the new spots in the 40’s a crack as the weather was awesome.  No real plan other than to “go the distance” and have a look at the marks.  The spots were found many years ago by a “now retired and moved away gentleman” in the days when you had to use a paper chart plotter on the sounder.  Didn’t he do a good job as the desert ocean floor turned to a “sounder explosion” whenever you moved over the marks.  They were relatively small but with the Minn Kota spot lock we could easily hold the ground and fish it with light gear.

It was the day of the sambos.  You know there are times when there are plenty of fish on the sounder but you can’t get a bite, this day was completely different to that.  The advice with these spots was “good luck getting through the sambos” and how true this was.  We had an epic few hours and boated 30-40 (all released).  Double and triple hookups were the norm and every bait worked with hordes of fish coming up to the surface to "support" the hooked ones.  After getting spooled by a very large model, Dean brought out the heavy artillery to try and land a big one.

There is nothing better than hearing a “locked up” Stella screaming in protest as the hooked fish tries to head to the horizon.  This was the story with one of them on the heavy gear and let’s just say there was quite a bit of pain involved.  

After a good fight the large model came to the boat and there was quite a bit of effort to get him on board without a gaff.  Nevertheless, we made it, and time for a quick photo before he went back.  We had no scales but this thing was all of 25kg+.

We ended up moving to try and get away from them and Dean scored an absolute horse of a flathead that went 67cm “cold”.  I got a nice black ass, and some big skippy, amongst heaps of other released things, before the sambos found us again.  The only downer was being bricked by a couple of very large likely Dhu.

The plan was to come in relatively early, as there were plenty of things to be done, and check the “red hunters” on the way back.  It’s always good to see the feelers hanging out of the pots when you bring them up and we ended up with 7 keepers out of 2 pots to top it all off.

It was one of those days that you hope for when you drag yourself out of bed at 4am for a morning fish.  Great company on an awesome boat and the fish played the game.