Took an RDO Monday just gone as the forecast of light winds and some rough weather the week before, I figured if I could find some stirred up water I'd be in with a chance for my first snapper for the season. Anchored up on sunrise on some inshore reefs not far out of Woodies and I let out a sigh of relief as the current carried the first handful of cubed mulies in the same direction as the wind. I fished with 3 rods to cover all bases, an unweighted bait for the rod holder, a lightly weighted plastic for another rod holder intended to fall/dance extremely slowly through the water column and a slightly heavier plastic that I would jig back through the burley trail. Didnt take long for the burley to do its thing with a couple of just undersized pinks coming in on the bait rod. I was fairly run off my feet fishing the 3 rods as my game-plan for anchoring and burleying for snapper is to always have your rigs slowly falling through the water column, so once my rigs hit the bottom after a long cast out the back I give the reel quite a few winds and get the rigs at least halfway up then let them slowly drift back down again and repeat until you're under the boat and then start all over again. Throw in chopping burley and jigging back the third rod and all of a sudden fishing isn"t so relaxing any more!

Working up a sweat paid off when the jigging plastic got clunked by a solid fish. With all the reports of 500-600mm sized snapper around I had opted to throw around a smaller 4in plastic and jighead, so I was stoked to land a solid pink on the 15lb outfit that ended up going 890mm.

I was well into the rhythm of cast, jig, cast, chop, throw, wind, jig jig jig, wind, chop, throw, cast, jig, wind when the slow sinking plastic outfit buckled over in the rod holder. This fish went 800mm. It coughed up a heap of my burley cubes and one of my whole fish baits that had flung off on a cast earlier in the morning when I got the fish to the side of the boat, burley is key!

I ended up with 2 sized snapper, missed a few big runs on the slow sinking plastic, and a dozen undersized snapper on the bait rod. Always worth mixing it up having bait and plastic offerings, some days they'll only eat one! I came in closer to try for skippy but couldn't get away from the rat yellowtail kings.

Friday evening I headed out with the brother and got stuck into some mulloway. Mixed it up again with plastics and livebait. Livebait was king claiming 3 fish but it was a blast to nail a few on plastic on a baitcaster outfit aswell. The first fish was on the first cast after anchoring, it smashed a plastic that I was slow hopping back to the boat, took me well by surprise!

Hope you enjoy the read guys, tightlines.