Leatherjacket

Southern Blue

Toona!

Sgt Baker Snapback

Samsonfish

Harlequin

Today we decided to head out from East Fremantle and try a variety of fishing. The day started with chaos at the ramp as the Swanfish Competition wound up as most people wanted to launch. There were also two boats left high and dry at the ramp as they must have tied up and not realised the tide was going to drop.

Anyway, we headed out to the back of Stragglers and worked a little ledge that went from 20 to 11 meters in a short space and had quite a few schooling fish on it. First fish landed was a baby leatherjacket on a snapback, it was smaller than the squidgy itself!

Next was a decent sized flathead and a few more wrasse on the snapbacks before I landed a 1kg skippy, all were released. We decided to move on from the lump as it was a bit quiet even with all the berley we had put in the water. We saw some baitfish in the area and decided to troll for a while. Less than 2 minutes later both of my lines were screaming off the back and chaos ensued. We managed to land 2 bonito's around the 1kg mark and let them swim off for another day.

After quite a while of not getting anything on the troll around the Chicken Run we headed out a couple of kilometers behind Rottnest and found a few patches where the birds were working. On the second troll around a school we were on again with a triple hookup of southern bluefin tuna. Amongst the chaos the skippers line was cut through by my braid and only 2 of the 3 fish were landed.

Gully had been out on the containers looking for Samsonfish but had no luck and it seems that they probably have started moving south and aren't aggregating in such numbers anymore. After a bit more trolling and no luck we headed to a bit of ground in 35m of water and anchored up to use the berley we had. The skipper still using snapbacks then landed two sgt bakers which absolutely inhaled the plastic!!

After a quiet period I hooked into something solid which felt like a good fish and within 5 minutes I had a decent samsonfish to the boat, I was calling it for a good snapper only to be disappointed. After getting busted off by another decent samsonfish I put down again to catch a beautiful harlequin that fought well for a small-medium sized fish.

It went quiet again and I landed a big eagle ray and the skipper picked up an eel and by that stage it was time to call it quits. Was an awesome day on the water and can't wait to get out there again! A few of the boys they have today off as well and are out amongst them, hopefully they will have a few more photos and stories to go with them!!