Had a long term good mate come to Perth for a relatives wedding and we caught up on the weekend and planned a trip if the weather was ok. Today gave us a “reasonable” morning so met Mal and his boy Timmo at the ramp about 5am and headed out to hunt some greenbacks on the nearshore reefs.

5 minutes from the ramp and the bomber and popper went out in 3-5m deep waters. Just near a bommie and the bomber was away. This was a fair fish that headed straight for cover and there was some tense times trying to get it around the rocks. When it was in open water, it didn’t fight like a big tailor and as it got to the boat there was the pink. We landed it to safely remove the trebles, a quick photo for the visitor, measure (66cm) and a strong release.

The other highlight of the day was being in close to the one mile reefs baitcasting the wash, when a school of big (10-20kg tuna) came through. The first indication was birds dive bombing around the boat and then there were the baitfish fleeing and the beasts smashing the surface within 5m. Timmo reacted quickly and got a small commercially caught gar on 5/0 gang into the middle of them. Inhaled by a big fish, and I saw it swim away with the hooks in its gob. A drag set for 1.5kg tailor didn’t really cut it and although Timmo did well, the fish won given the cover it had.

Although the waters looked good we couldn’t find the tailor, but bagged out on herring when the easterly was too strong to fish the reef breaks and we had to hide close to shore. It was an enjoyable and memorable day for the things that happened – I guess you just need to be out there.