Hi fisho and friends in the forum

I just returned home from australia about 1 week ago.

i would love to thank the friends i met at the tackle shops in WA and my ex school mate who are still studying in the uni there.

Fishing has been great as i'm not really a fussy fisherman. i just want the thrill of hooking up one at the end of the line.

day 1:

night fishing with my ex school mate, coogee jetty. Reached there about 10pm after a dinner over at my place with asian home cooked food i dish out for them. upon reaching the jetty there were 3 groups of anglers there on all 3 platforms so we just set up the lighter gear for some bait fish. just as we got enough of the bait, the 1st group bid farewell to us and told us to take over their spot as they were so lucky tonight.

We quickly set up our heavy gear and cast off the bait fish. time was slow and our bait was constantly being ripped off by the blue swimmer crabs, man they are all over the place, 10m/20m/even 40m out. Finally our last 2 baits, each of us use 1 while the other anglers in our group give up. so after the cast, all sat down and was talking about the rig i use, as they have never used this sort of rig before.

Half way thru my demo, we hear a loud screaming from the reel, we are looking at both corners where we have placed our rod. it was mine, shimano acceration 6000pg (with 20lbs braided) with ajn samurai 7ft rod and the rod was bending to a 7 shape as the fish took off while the rod is still on the rod stand. the 1 burst of run took close to 50m of line and i was losing line and if that continued, i will be running on dry soon. continuing to apply pressure and began to pump the fish back, the motion was coming in and dashing out again, it just refuse to give up and we all know that it is a big one on the end of the line as they've never seen this rod bend till that shape. After 45min or so of reeling and sweating in the cold night, we saw a big white shape surfacing from the dark water. Everyone shouted "Sting Ray" and it was half the size of a dining table. Est weight to be close to 30kg. And this is one big ray i landed from shore casting after so many years. (not so much luck in asia as max go up to abt 10kg for personal record). That ended the night well with tired hands and shaky legs. :)

day 2-5:

night fishing with a twist, instead of fishing we went for squid as one of my tackle shop buddies took me on a couple of nights of squid hunting from cuttlefish to greeneye to arrow. we had great fun getting them on our ultra light set up, (size 500-1500 reels and ajn stealth carbon rods"rating 0.4-1.5") as food (aka snacks) and as bait for mulloway. Was told by him that winter is the season for them as they come in and spawn. on avg we hit abt 5-8 and called it a night, that we have what we need and we wont go for more. At least we leave some to fight another day

I would say, the cuttlefish are the biggest i caught so far, weighing in at about 1.5kg.

final day:

it was an off day for my tackle shop buddy, so we were thinking of maxing out the ultra light carbon rods that i brought over. So we headed down to mandurah for some fast and furious skippy action. Reached the place but we missed the time so had to wait for another 3-4hrs before the flow started again. And when it started, we were hitting skippy but landing them is not easy on the rocky area. hit and misses as they really play hard and dirty, dashing in and out and into underground rocks, cutting our leader as we are using very light poundage leader for max fun. Finally we managed to bring up some and take photos and only took back 3 pcs.

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