anyone know if any billfish got caught at the rotto trench for the billfish classic over the weekend. ?

hey FW, in follow up to my previous post for advice on my first charter fishing experience heres the report of how the day went.
first of all big thanks to the crew at Port Bouvard charters, they put alot of effort in to get us onto fish. the crew were a good bunch of blokes with alot of character, i enjoyed chatting and swapping stories with them and picked up some advice aswell. food and snacks were good and plenty of water/fizzy drinks. also even with a full boat fishing shoulder to shoulder it at no point felt overly cramped, idealy a few less would be great so everone could spread out more but it was definately no dealbreaker. next time might take the advice on bringing my own bait as it was squid only untill we caught some seargent baker but still alot of fish caught. i would definatly go out with them again thanks guys.

early start to the morning with bugger all sleep prior (too excited mabye) left at 5am for the 1 hr trip to pt bouvard, gear and eski all packed night before, hopes were high.

sunrise from the jetty and the boat.

ended up taking my baitrunner/terez combo with 30lb braid, 40lb leader and an extreme botton rig as my bait rod. due to some advice from FWA pro tackle and the weather looking to be really good with only 1m swell and bugger all wind all morning. i decided to take my FWA rod and new 3000stradic to fish some soft plastics, 20lb braid and fluro leader, 1 1/2oz jighead and some mcarthy plastics. full boat with 19 ppl fishing, only myself and another fishing braid so we were setup at the back of the boat.
because of the good weather skipper decided we would head wide straight away and work our way back. left around 645 and headed out, they threw out some skirts to troll for tuna as soon as we left the marina. was a long trip out, time in which i learnt i get seasickness, distracted myself chatting to the deckies and keeping an eye on the horizon. hr in first hookup on the troll, a young kid took the first one and reeled in a nice bluefin tuna, biggest one of the day about 750mm. 2nd came up about 15mins later landed by myself, not bad and my first fish on troll/first tuna. no real fight, we were trolling fast, over 15knots so possibly buggered by the time they caught the lure and we stoped the boat,  got setup etc. got another about 30mins later, after over 2 hrs travelling with a few tuna stops we made it to the first spot.
morning was slow with only the 3 tuna, some seargent baker (used for bait) and some undersized fish, a little frustrating admittantly. didnt spend long at each spot and i didnt even have a nibble for the first few, by 1130 only a breaksea cod and an ok snapper on the boat. each spot seemed to get a few more bites and by 12 it was starting to go well got my first hookup on baits, pulling up an undersized snapper at 450, spewin. few others had started catching aswell, had sweep, more baker, breaksea, a couple snapper and a sized dhu.
second hookup with a bit more fight, scored a nice breaksea at 480mm. not his lucky day, or week as he had a bit of a tussle with a shark or other toothy critter recently with scars and a wound to show for it.

bit more moving (usually oportunities i took to have a sneaky chunder over the back of the boat) and things start to heat up some more when someone lands a massive dhu, wieghed in at 18kgs, was a horse, only thing that wouldve made it better was if it was mine haha. sounds like it put on a bit of a fight and was called for a stingray at first as was moving around the bottom alot. guy next to me also caught a whiskery shark, approx 1300mm thing went spastic once it hit the deck before being subdued by the priest, deckies were really efficient head/fins off, guts out, flushed with the deckwash bagged and in the freezer. moved on again, woulda been nice to do another drift over that spot but no go. next spot i hooked up big, started to come up as a big wieght before it took off surging down and pulling drag. fought it up gradually between surges, before some colour appeared, hopes were up for a dhu but deckie called sambo and up it came. still another first for me, wieghed in just over 4kg and 750mm, after that fight i can see why others on here target the bigger ones! we moved on again, dropped drifted into the zone then bang, back on big time,  big hard surges of another sambo but alot more power/weight. ended up just holding the fish in place couldnt gain anything on him for a while between surges before he took off forwards along the boat, collected everyones lines with it... deckies and others were great, keen to see this fish landed, between myself and the deckies we were moving along the boat going up, over and around lines and rods. ended up in a big tangle up the front deckies tried to undo it but the line was hitting the boat at this stage and busted off, rig, leader and about 50meters+ of braid gone. it was about 2 by now so i didnt bother re rigging for another go as i had the plastics rod all ready. some tips from the deckies, a drop off the other side of the boat to check the drift and i was fairly confident i was getting into the right zone. 2 more drops, worked the plastic up and free spooled it back down, as i flipped the bail back over the rod loaded up, few pumps and dropped it. quickly free spooled it back down, flicked the bail back over and was on! good weight putting a nice bend in the rod, some head shakes, decky was calling snapper or dhu but after a short fight i landed my second blackarse on a 7inch bullhead minnow in pearl. also my first fish on a soft plastic! a good one at that, bit fatter that the first at 2kgs and 470mm. plastic was chewed up rerigged for another drop but the seasickness came in again and i was burlying up over the side while they were still asking me if i wanted to keep my fish or not. had my bag of demersals so opted to keep the blackarse and give the foxfish away. had a few a few more drops with some small bites but missed the hook before the skipper called it quits around 330.
part of me would have loved to keep going but i was done, sea sickness subsided for the trip home which was good, got back to the jetty at 530 and for everyone to collect there catch and award catch of the ay trophy that went ot the lucky bugger with the monster dhu.

the kill tank after docking.
was a great day out, would have loved to get into some dhus or even snapper but ive heard breaksea cod are great eating and i love a bit of sashimi so stoked with my tuna. ended up keeping the sambo as some said the small ones arent too bad, which i fileted up when i got home.did the sambo first and got alot of meat off it, tried a bit first fried up in the pan and was good, flakey, white and quite mild. next bit i overdid a little and it turned to mush, parasites i believe cause this? i tried another bit deep fried and made sure it was only just cooked to experiment. not mushy at all and tasted good but as i was breaking it apart found a not so small worm, pulled it out of the flesh and it was about 15cms long... i know this shouldnt affect the taste etc but i just dont think i can eat it after that, got a strong stomache but yeah...
 

was 560mm and 2.5kgs, lotta meat on these. peeled the skin off and cut into 4 loins, trimmed the dark red section off (bloodline?) and ended up with a fair bit of meat

the top fish looks like it lost some weight or was unable to grow due to healing the bit wound as its the longer fish but alot less girth.
got some thick fillets off the cod, nice easy fish to fillet, no pin bones, and each fillet is enough for me and my gf to share so theres a few meals there, cant wait
.
fresh sashimi, was a bit nervous at first but was delicious! also have some soaking in vinegar in the fridge and froze the rest along with the fillets.

Hey everyone

Didnt end up going to North Mole, but spent 2 nights at Rockingham Jetty. Plenty of tuna jumping but they won't take a ballooned bait. First night got a few small sharks and rays, second night was a bit more quite, there was lots of rays a port jackons. The second night there was tonnes of bait around, so we filled a bucket if nice size blue mackerel and scaly mackerel, so next shark fishing trip is looking pretty good

Sorry about the crappy phone pics they don't do the fish justice.

Cheers for reading

Final results for those that are interested.

Dhufish - 16.3kg - G. Harrold

Pink Snapper - 8.08kg - G. Bennett

Baldchin - 4.31kg - S. Brown

Samson - 17.5kg - N. Rowse

Break Sea Cod - 2.19kg - A. Borrello

Garfish - 0.284kg - B. Shepherd

Queen Snaper - 5.59kg - T. Bell

Tailor - 1.63kg - T. Moran

King George - 1.15kg - S. Brown

Skipjack - 3.07kg - C. Ackerman

Herring - 0.384kg - R. Riches

Sand Whiting - 0.251kg - A. Thomas

Flathead - 1.88kg - B. Campbell

Harlequin Cod - 1.93kg - M. Langridge

 sbject says it all

 Double hook up dolphin fish at the hillarys Fad today, We  landed one and the other fish is swimming round with a halco red hed shallow diver, shimano sargosa reel and 24kg shimano jig stick hanging out of its mouth, very expensive day fishing, but just another great fishing story to tell. yes i am a D..k head.

Weather looking average so we are taking the floating gin palace (Boston Whaler Conquest 285) out of Ocean Reef.

Come and say gday in the Marina while we are waiting for the shotgun, out wide expect a snapper sinker coming your way if you get too close.....haha!!!!

Good luck for those who are going. The lack of Tuna on the prize list has shhhhtoomped our plans this year!!!!!

 Having just got back from 3 nights at the mouth of the Moore River with 2 mates I thought I'd chuck up a quick report.

We arrived around midday Monday and set up the camp in good time, grabbed the bream gear and headed down to the river for a quick flick. Two hours of tiny bream passed with only one legal fish landed and we decided to head back for some food and to set up the big rods.

Over the 3 days we did a bit of breaming, although with the plagues of tiny fish we didn't put too much effort into it. The better quality fish came from the mouth at night whilst we were passing time waiting for the surf rods to buckle over.

Night one was windy and the weed was prevalent but we persisted for a few small shovel nose and a nice mulla coming in at 120cm, my first and by far the highlight of the trip.

Night 2 saw great conditions, with a fairly light south easterly keeping the conditions pleasant. Matt lost a horse of a mulloway right on sunset that nailed a live tailor. A 60cm soapie on the bream gear kept things interesting in the surf. After that the night belonged to rays and rays alone, with us landing 7 or 8 alongside 5 tiny shovellies before calling it quits just after midnight.

Night 3 was very tough, with a howling SW and heaps of weed, we struggled until about 11pm before giving up, keeping a bait in the water was near on impossible despite using 10 ounces of lead. 

All in all, the tiny shovelnose were a major pain in the arse, with well over 10 landed across the 3 nights.

We yakked out large baits every night, with the baits sitting for over 8 hours each night without a touch which was very surprising to us. We thought the Sharks would be in numbers in that area.

A great trip and one we will do again in the near future, especially since it is barely an hour from home.

Hutch

 I did it. I finally caught one of these legendary fish that I can cross off my list. May not be that massive ones you hear the morning after but I got a sized one at 62cm and didn't camp a night for one. 

Caught on a live trumpet that I had jagged just like the legends foretold that it would. 

I'm a happy fisherman having struggled weeks to catch anything at all. Caught in busselton ;) 

Quick run yesterday arvo in great conditions. Lucky to land this 80cm dhu on jig, Shout 2/0 had started to straighten, first time I have straightened these hooks, usually pretty strong.

hi all , I have done a lot of research on the site but still would like some up to date knowledge.
travelling to Two Rocks for a boating weekend and would like to know generally what depths ect to find the demersals in .
Im not asking for GPS co ords as I know they are all well guarded , just some local know where and know how would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks to those in advance who don't mind sharing some ifo

Phil

New boat...Itching to get some crays...Are they still in close at Mandurah or gone out wide...:-)

With the last trip to Cervantes being a winner I had to get back up again for another crack at it!

There was a small gap last week with one day being ideal and the next day not so. The forecaster's were spot on with the weather and fishing being good the first day one and well the early seabreeze cut short the second day!

My staff member Reese came up and so did good mate Scott.So first day, magic conditions and I did another few hours of recon. Racking up new spots is a buzz when it happens and that morning far & few between!

So I step out deeper and fished a few old spots and straight into dhufish on jigs. We struggled to get away from dhufish which is a good problem (like last time) so I headed a bit deeper to see if I could find a breaksea/baldy etc

I had no spots in that deeper stuff so did some driving around, located a nice deep water lump and down went the jigs. We all hooked up again and my rod fully loaded up to something very solid!

I said to Reese a big dhu me thinks and after a good fight up popped a quality dhu. I said to the boys its a bit smaller than my last one last trip and guessed it at around 17kg. Back at the filleting station I weighed it and I was pleasantly surprised it was actually a bit bigger than my last one!

End result it's now my PB on jig at 19kg (weighed on digital scales). The standout jig including what the big dhu ate was the Lamble Kanpachi 2 jig in 135g & 165g. Our favourite assits's are the Jigging Sports Australia brand and the model used was the " Lazer " in the new 4/0 hook size!

Thanks boys for your company, cheers Jimmy and Casey for lending me your house again - Thanks

 Wondering how anyone else who went out yesterday fared. Was a beautiful day on the water, a decent swell was running but we found the fishing pretty quiet, bar a 20 minute period around mid morning. Got a few nice size Black Bums, a nice Baldy and our first Wobby. There were heaps of boats out yesterday too. How did everyone else fare?

Cheers

Chris

With the weather forecast not to crash hot in perth lastweek and exmouth looking good decided to bite the bulleit and go.
My main aim was marlin but found them pretty hard to come by. Water felt abit cool.

Thought i would throw up a few pictures of the fish/squid/crabs we have beeen catching since christmas.

Young bloke with a squid he caught in Albany. Pretty stoked with himself.

Yellow tail kings from Albany. Good fun on light jig gear. Except snapping my Mytho on one.

Squid from Albany. 8 in 20 mins 6 ove 30cm hood biggst 36cm.

Crabs from Mandurah. We got 16 that night just a bad picture.

Couple of shark mack from Mandurah. Good fun on light gear.

Few reefies for a quick trip out of Albany and a few skippy.

Feed of marron from up the river after a night camping.

Cheers Jayce

My old man and I struggled pretty hard to scrape together a feed on Saturday morning. The kids jump on and then we pull these two in next two pots. They loved it! Overall didn't get a lot but all good size. Was a bit late starting and a bit early finishing as we took the kids in to EQ.

Hi Fishwrecked

Headed out early yesterday to hit up the fads. Keen to try and catch another of these speedsters and with the weather forecast, I couldn't resist.

As predicted, the weather was magic and we arrived at the fads at about 6:30am or so.

When we rocked up there was a boat there, which left as soon as we arrived. Thought to myself, no fish here. So we trolled around a bit for no return. As we did the birds became more and more active and then we saw dolphinfish free jumping, a fair way from the fad.

Trolling and lures were not working, so we killed the engine and set up a drift towards the birds, thowing out cubes of mulies and as well as a couple which were attached to hooks. Well it didn't take long and we had our first one on board!

Biggest problem with this method was the hundreds and hundreds of rat kings which were marauding everything as soon as we got too close to the fad. If we were a fair way away it was ok, but anywhere near the fad these things would destroy everything, leaving no chance of the dolphinfish to see the bait let alone bait with hooks in it!

Anyway we persisted and eventually ended up with 3 dolphinfish (inbetween a million kings). We hit up another 2 fads, but 1 had another million kings, and the other was dead.

Saw some big tuna jumping out the back of rotto.

On the way home we had a bottom bash, which resulted in 1 sambo, 1 breaksea cod.

Good day on the water.

 Checked out some ground ive wanted to dive for awhile(again)

Had caught a bag of crays couple of kms south so tried a spot off the shore a bit further north today.

Got in heaps of fish life, nice scenery kakkas in close which there were many of.

Kept heading west. Found some nice lumps and holes which held a few. Some kakkas some just sized some well over. Quite a few soft, some whites, some rregulars. 

Didn't see any sized demersals.

Saw some crays that were not quite at the jumbo size at end of dive. Other than wishing id gone earlier in the day, great to be in the water

 I'm heading down for a house boat holiday would appreciate some info on how and where there  catChing some blueys .

PM me if you know wheres best to try at the moment on the Estuary I'm also 

planning on heading up the Murray  towards Ravenswood and  

pinjarah 

many thanks in advance 

 plan was to fish all night but bagged out on 2nd drop! So cooked up a feed then gutted a carton of sport and woke up at 630 am fishing the 40m line for a tuna! Didn't get any, saw a lot of baitfish on surface! 

 Out off Bunbury and a Black crab from down south

After finishing my False Enterance trip i had plans to continue heading up to Quobba to see what all the fuss was about on my own and with no return date planned i knew i would have plenty of time to have a good explore around.

pulled out of overlander and said my goodbyes to the guys from the false trip and headed north, stopping in canarvon for supplies and off i went. Got in about lunch time and quickly threw everything out of ther car at my camp spot and went exploring. Used a hand drawn map i had made from google earth research and pics of others fishing and started pin pointing all of the common spots and some more possible locations. ended up walking to Garths for a quick arvo flick just to explore but the water was a absolutely filthy green colour that i didnt escape for the entire trip, horrible water and fish where very very hard to come by but i set myself a goal of one decent fish a day and stuck to tried and tested methods for me. First morning i picked up a nice cobia on the 30lb gear at Garths second cast and dropped a fish a few casts later, the next few days where a lot less lucky than that with a good 7-10 hours of spinning a day put into getting 1-2 hookups for one fish landed generally. caught a massive array of species with a lot landed solo including gaffing on very light gear from 20-50lb. i did spend a lot of time targetting GT's but for no sucess on the heavy gear, the water was just to dirty and fish just not around so ill be back to tick that one off.

Only used 3 main setups the entire trip and it covered everything i wanted.
Assassin Amia 11ft pe1-2, 20lb Tasline and 3012H Certate and that caught me 2 Grey Macks, 2 Shark Macks
Gary Howard spin cast pro 4-6kg 9ft 30lb Tasline, 4000 Catalina and that landed 1 big spango, 1 cobia, 1 big goldspot, 1 pinky
Assassin Sierra 2XH 11ft, 50lb JBD 4X braid and a twinpower 5000 with a 7000 spool. got one small GT, 1 Grey mack, 1 big spango, 2 Mack tuna, 1 shark mack, 1 tiny spanish.

spent hours and hours driving all over the station to try and find patches of cleaner water to spin in, lost some absolute amazing fish to either bad luck or silly mistkaes. just a cursed trip for me but we all get them.

First big fish was a horse of a GT that ate my lure at the edge of the rocks on the 50lb gear after getting a tip wrap so while i took it out the fish grabbed the lure, fought it for 10 minutes before i had it surfaced and buggered before a wave washed it over a rock and caught my line up, i freespooled then fought the fish gently through the reef for 40 minutes before it finally broke free and lost it.

Second fish was a very large tuna that i must of landed the lure on its head because i couldnt close the bail arm on the reel line was leaving that quick, came up tight and it puilled 200m of 50lb off my twinpower before coming back at me and going deep then after 10 minutes the hooks pulled somehow.

Third still haunts me and makes me want to burn the Jerry Brown factory to the ground. Fishing Garths one arvo on my own and seen one huge shark and a smaller shark come up to look at a bird on the surface so out of instinct i grabbed the 30lb setup with a plastic on it which i had just respooled with Jerry brown solid braid as i got spooled and lost the other line the day before on the catalina. cast at these sharks as they dissapeared into the green depths, seconf twitch and came up tight, fought this monster all over the place for an hour before it came to the surface absolutelly buggered, turns out what i thought was a second shark was in fact a 1.5-1.6m Cobia!!! with the fish pretty much done i backed the drag off to be safe and started steering it to the gaff in my hand. about 10m from the ledge the braid just popped out of nowhere and i watched a possible 30-40kg cobia slowly cruise back into the depths. 

Stil landed some great fish and for mostly solo (Thanks to the guys who helped gaff my fish) on my first trip to quobba in very hard conditions i did very well to bag myself out in 6 days and stayed for a total of 8 before calling it quits, ill be back again at some stage and best of all i didnt get sharked once on the lighter gear which i was suprised about.

 Hey All

Been a while in between posts. The silly season and constant travel to different cities has got a little to my fishing life. But im back and back with avengance!

Hit up the kings for a 7 dayer with some mates from NZ and a few from Aus and one lad i hadnt met yet (masterbait lures owner and designer).

This years trip was to target topwater and the normal jigging and if we were lucky a sword (just wait for it)

well, we were well and truely blessed, three trips to the kings and never had a nice glassy day till this trip. Where we got 7 of them

6 Anglers v estimated 350kg + Sword: Well night one we hooked a freight train, 9 hours the first angler went on him (we think when it jumped it threw the hooks and re hooked it self in the dorsal etc etc) and the rest of between 1-3 hours. The fight time 18 hours and 20 mins till the hooks pulled. Lets just say Lance was not a happy chap. If you know lance you would know his reaction to this. was on a 80w, and the fish owned us. He was no way near done, and happily say 60 m under the boat for a good 5 hours for before the hooks pulled. The sword deserved freedom. Yes we got a few good looks at him and surprizingly enough , it was the first 4-5 hours of the fight where we had it with 2 gaffs lengths of the boat.....from sunrize we never saw it again. and we battled through the next night , roughly to around 10 pm

Best Jigged Bass : 44kg

Best Bait Bass : 48 Kg

Best Jigged King : 40 Kg

Best Top water king: 27kg

Best Jigged Puka : 30 Kg

Best Jigged Blue Eye : 15 kg

Best Trev: 10.5 kg

3 tagged striped marlin between 90-140 kg

The kings were quiet we think due to the weather but the fish we got were quality. The bass owned us once again. came with heavier gear and got schooled once again....

Enchanter is an amazing charter and lance knows his shit!

Fishing with Lei from Master Bait lures was a blessing and he certainly taught me alot for a top water novice!

Enjoy the photos, got plenty more ...maybe one day 

 Headed out for an early morning crab near the narrows.

Only got three but all a good size.

Biggest went 184mm and a bit over 600mm claw to claw.

All chock-a-block full of meat.  

Im heading there now to do some fishing and just realised there may be some salmon there, what are my chances?

 G'day guys,

Ive been a member for a few months now and have silently absorbed a huge amount of info from these forums and as a new boat owner some of the advice has been very helpful. So thanks for all of the great info and stories you post, they give me great motivation to tick off my fish bucket list!

Anyway we took advantage of the warm weather last night to head down to a reliable tailor spot on one of our northern beaches for a feed and was more than happy we stayed on a bit after sun down as I landed 2 60cm mulloway. A first for me and my mate was a little jealous although he did get a nice tailor over 40cm.

Sure beat sittin on the couch watching the Aussies get flogged!

Cheers Stu

 Went for a shore dive down Mandurah way at a spot I've wanted to dive for some time. Swam out not much on the cray front in the shallow 5-6 meters but some interesting ground and surge nonetheless. 

Kept swimming west and got stuck into a few. Once I hit the 8-10 meter mark they were there. Kakkas mixed in with sized crays. Some soft a few whites, soft in between.

Got back to the shore with a bag limit and plenty more out there!

 The better half booked a few days off either side of last weekend to take advantage of the public holiday gone.

Took the dive and snorkel gear and explored some beaches west and east of Denmark.

First day at the beach the swell was borderline to get abs at one location so after awhile I gave up and chose to snorkel around. Found and caught my first Southern Rock Lobster somewhere around the 130/140 mm on the carapace. Far superior in taste to the west coast models. Also relocated to the bbq a smallish occy whose sacrifice was well thanked and regarded.

Ambled round enjoying the coastline further east driving around and walking. Water activities subsided til the arvo when heading home and got in west of town. Felt a little edgy swimming out a few hundered meters but was met with a good family of nice sized greenlips. Headed further out to find an inquisitive female Blue Groper and a Queen Snapper (650+/-) snuffling about.

Loaded the gun for the Snapper to end somehow manage to make spaghetti. Sorted it out and found the Queen Snapper. Dispatched and felt there was more than enough to eat.

Swam in keeping an eye out for Bruce.

Upon getting near a granite outcrop to sort out the gun, guts and gills of fish a nice Blue Groper about 800 or so came in for a look. Had not sorted gun out so Groper lived to be inquisitive for another day. Figured I had enough to warrant a few good feeds as well as swimming back in a couple of hundred meters with part bleeding fish

Cooked up abs and fish on bbq last night and tonight. Had forgotten the taste of greenlips. Another road trip to the south coast in order