Christmas for the Dreamweaver family promised to be a quiet affair, with only one of our four children making the trip down to Mount Barker. Emma, our eldest daughter had promised to come down - minus the partner and duly arrived on Christmas evening, accompanied by all the presents - hers and everyone else's. The plan was for her to be the 'present messenger', taking all ours back up to Perth on Boxing Day Morning.

We'd discussed what we would do, and Emma, always ready to have a crack at fishing on the boat, suggested we do just that.

So, after final preparations the day before Christmas, we loaded the boat and set off at 06:15am and were down at Emu Point boat ramp for 07:00am.

As expected, the ramp was pretty quiet, although unlike last year, we were not the first. There was already one empty boat trailer parked and another chap in front of us. 

After watching him doing everything wrong )he obviously hadn't read my Boat Ramp Etiquette article in FWA's November issue ) and preparing the boat, we dipped the hull into a glassy low tide Oyster Harbour:

After some discussion as we made the long 8 knott arc through the channel, we'd decided that, with a SW swell and moderate wind, and the promise of both to increase later in the morning, we'd head out around Eclipse Island, some 15nm from base. Promised conditions weren't perfect by any means - but that's Albany for you.

By the time we reached the mouth of King George sound, everyone was eager to get out there:

The trip to Eclipse Island was fairly slow going, with a fairly lumpy head sea, despite the low seas and swell.

But by 09:00 am we had reached our destination and I'd set us up on a drift across some good structure.

With Sandra and Emma on board, the requirement to assist removing fish, my role as the photographer, and the need to log all the catches, it promissed to be a VERY busy morning for me!

Sandra was first to drop her line and immediately brought up our first for the day - a nice 50cm Harlequin:

Action was aplenty as Sandra followed that five minutes later with a 45cm Fox Fish, followed by Emma 5 minutes later with a double header of swallow tail, then her own Foxy: followed by a good sized wrasse:

Moments later, Sandra's rod buckled and, after some struggle and some grunting and groaning, a very respectable skippy was brought on board:

It was just before 10:00am and things went quiet, so I decided we'd set up a slightly different drift over alternative ground. Thirty minutes later Emma was first down and immediately her rod buckled - indicating a decent fish, with lots of head thrusts and the occasional line peel. I called it immediately for a blue morwong and was right. A nice 52cm specimen came on board:

After that, and only 6 minutes later it was action a plenty with a nice black bum from Sandra, a Foxy for me, and a double header (Nanny and BA) for Emma - all hitting the deck at the same time. I was going to be VERY busy! 

Sandra's Black Bum:

Emma's Double Header:

14 minutes later - Emma followed up with another double header - another Red and a swallow tail - here's the red:

Then Sandra's rod buckled savegly and I could see she was loosing line far too fast and was dangerously close to being buried in the structure below. At Sandra and Emma's prompting, I took over. Try as I may, I could not retreive any line:

I might add that this last hook up was whilst anchored and we found out later that the fish had snagged the other paternosta rig hook on the anchor line.

Like I said, conditions weren't perfect, but they could have been worse:

Between the three of us, we had a fair hall of fish, and called it for home just before Noon.  

Here's the log (some changes to be made):