We decided to head out from two Rocks, not having been up that way for a couple of years. The plan was to head off from home at 4.30am to beat the rush to get onto the water at this somewhat restricted ramp. Good plan, so good in fact that every other bugger in Perth had the same idea and the queue was around the car park, up the hill and down the road. It was decision making time. Do we head elsewhere or wait to get in. Others were coming in behind us and turning around. The decision was made for us when the line started to move. 75 mins later, we were launched and pushing out of the heads.

I was going to fish some marks that I had found over 20 years ago in a relatively shallow 38m and only about 10nm out. The ground was very inconspicuous, having been found way back by the old method of drifting. The sounder I had in thsoe days was a mono Lowrance LMS200, a pretty good sounder for those days but even that did not show this ground to be anything special, no little rises or drop off just flat, rubbly bottom that looked featureless, without any fish even showing but all those years ago we had found 3 pots on it and decided to give it a go. It has never let us down over all the years and we had always fished it lightly. Over the years I had added points and plotted out the boundaries of this little area, the steady SW was going to provide the best drift angle that would allow us to progressively work the area.

We were fishing a mix of metal jigs and baits to cover a couple of bases. The jig was the first one in and within one or two lifts he was on, baits were not even raedy to go in yet ! So up somes a smallish Dhuwhich we released successfully back home to catch another day. Baits went in and the jigman comes up tight again ! This time up come a Sergeant Baker, I grabbed it straight away and sent it back down as bait. Over the next couple of hours or so we caught more Sgt bakers and other ubdesirables as well as a steady stream of undersize Dhus. Jigs were still taking the honours, easily outfishing bait. 

Then we came up on a really nice piece of ground. Now that I have a sounder that can burn fish scales off at 100m it became really evident what was down there, It was flat and rubbly but it was also very hard. The white line thickened right up and we got lots of scattering under the return echo. Right on cue, a nice baldy hit the baits and went straight into the esky, this was followed by a sized Pinky and then another big Sergeant Baker. More fresh bait and I took the time to put on a couple of nice fat fillets on to a snell of 9/0. Another bait user landed another solid Baldie, and then the jigman came up solid on a good fish, it made his little PE1.5 and 4000 reel work hard and up popped a nice sized Dhu, probably around 4-5 kgs. Just as they were high fiving, I was slammed by a nice fish. My new Venom and Talica played him out easily and we were rewarded when we saw the big flash of colour start to rise out behind the boat. He was manouvered over to the gaff and into the esky. We decided that would do us as we had a good feed and didnt need more so decided to call it a day and get back to beat the rush.

Took a nice leisurely run back to the ramp only to see at least 14 boats in the marina waiting to come out. There was nothing else to do but sit and wait. Just over an hour and we were out and ready to go.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the courtesy and patience demonstrated by all boats at the marina both launching and retrieving. It makes a nice change to see everyone exercising restraint when they were all mad keen to get out and into them. It was also good to see how people noted who they were behind and just jockeyed their boat around before it was their turn to approach the ramp to retrieve. Much better that some of these other impatient pr*cks that you can see at some other popular launch sites.

The days catch which provided us with plenty of nice fillets.

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