Just got back from shark bay had a couple of days good fishing before it started to BLOW

Day 1

Launched from Denham and headed for the Dampier reef , Trolled and bottom bounced the reef for a couple of hours for some shark macks, lots of Trevally and some just sized red throats,  not alot happening so went down the ocean side of Dirk Hartog

looking for some new ground to try out, and found a cracking spot, 5 guys on the boat and we bagged out on pinkies in the first  2 drops  , then  we got good size rankin , estuary  and tomato cod. Then followed the boats first Red Emperor and Cobia .The

wind was getting up so we headed for  home trolling all the way up to Turtle  Bay for only a blowie and another shark mackerel.

Day 2

Had a late start to the day as the weather was forecast to improve in the afternoon , once again headed up to the top end of Hartog and started to look for similar ground, different story today with only a couple of  size pinkies and blackies and lots of undersize fish landed, with darkness approaching we decided to give some of the ground around Dampier Reef a crack at night,. By 10 pm we had bagged out our limit for the day on pinkies, blackies, a mulla, estuary cod ,rankin cod and spangled emperors that you could put a saddle on and ride away into the darkness. The dark hours were broken up by sea snakes coming around for a look see and a monster tiger.

At 10 we decided to clear the deck and head for denham , conditions were good with an expected 1.5 - 2 hour run back to denham, less than 5 minutes into the trip home with the boat traveling at 33 knots there was an almighty bang , shit we had hit something and hit it hard. It was all hands on deck all compartments were opened and checked to see if we were taking on water, engine up and check the prop and leg for damage. No visible damage so we started to plan for beaching the boat on turtle bay if we started taking on water. Looked at the brand spanking new plotter to plot a course to turtle bay , Zip, Nada no satelites found  dead in the water between Dorre and Dirk Hartog.After just spotting a big tiger there were some nervous faces on board.

When my mate  had the new plotter installed he decided to lave all the original navman cables in case he had any difficulty with the new system, and the navman was on the boat and up and running in a couple of minutes and heading for home after reaching denham we checked the boat and found no damage , we figure that we hit a turtle or something but it scared the shit out of 5 grown men.

The next couple of days were bad but  we ventured out to the island and got some red throat and pinkies ,blackies but no sign of macks anywhere

We did not have a  big problem with being sharked as every spot we fished we tied a couple of fish frames to one of the heavy rods  dropped the over and it kept the sharks from most of our fish.The new sounder will be back with the dealer on monday looking for some answers.

I did not see any macks landed all week but heard that some were being caught in the shipping channel for the salt mine, over all we got some great fish but nearly filled our daks too.

Cheers Vince.