Headed out at 11:00 from 2 Rocks to check where the fish were for tomorrows big day .Took Lisa out for a run, didn't take long to find good fish back in the marina for 1:15 Lisa got her first baldie and it was a cracker, 2 dhuies also realesed.Looks like it could be a good day tomorrow.

Weather was good and one of my mates was free for our first trip to the southern group for a few days, I thought I was organised for Monday arvo departure but as I checked hyd/electric trailer brakes with controller turned up for full pressure, 1 of the lines developed a pin hole leak, ran around local suppliers and had new line fabricated, installed, fluid bleed and system tested ok. The call was to now leave at 3am Tuesday morning, which went smoothly and we arrived 9am at Gero. Stopped at servo and loaded eskies with ice, fuelled boat and spare containers. Departed from Batavia boat ramp with flat seas and cruised over to Islands at 20kn taking approximately 1hr 45 mins. Spent rest of the afternoon taking photos around Post Office and Newman Islands while checking water depths and possible mooring options. We had a quick fish west (and outside) of the coral patch observation area and easily found a good feed of sweet lip for dinner. Motored in to anchorage location at the northern end of Pelsaert Island to find 3 other boats already there but they were more than happy for us to find space and helped guide us into position.
Wednesday morning we started pulled some skirts from north end to south and around the south west side of Pelsaert Island for a few hours with only 1 screaming run and fish dropped after short fight. Spent the rest of the day bottom bouncing between 20 and 40 meters on the west side with various demersal fish caught and released with the majority being sweet lips, no big fish but enough action to keep us entertained. Kept a few fish for dinner and returned to our mooring at the northern end with the same 3 boats plus 1 other boat for the night.
On Thursday morning we decided to move around to the north east side of the Island, we started fishing in 20 meters of water and found plenty of fish, I fished with plastics and my mate fished baits, again nothing big but a lot of coral trout that mainly fell to the plastics. Moved out to the 40’s and fished some lumps but after 1 good baldie and 65cm pinkie we kept getting sharked, so called it a day early and headed to Middle Island for overnight anchorage as there was some dark clouds forming with rain setting in and we wanted to navigate our way to Middle Island with the light available just in case visibility got worse. Anchored in mooring area near some charter boats and couple of yacht’s, sat back, had a few beers and prepared coral trout and baldies for dinner. A couple more beers before bed while prepared boat for early morning return to Gero and trip back to Perth.
Friday morning we left the Island and cruised back to boat ramp with car and trailer as I had left them, which is always a relief to see when on extended trips. Trouble free return to Perth, (Safety Bay) except for Friday arvo traffic jams on freeway south of Perth, Next trip I will time my return better and probably fish the morning before returning to avoid Perth’s peak traffic hours.
So a great place to visit and although we never caught anything for the brag board it was great fun and a learning curve for future trips. Not many photos attached due to quality and back ground discrepancies, will do better next time. Can’t believe how fast the days flew by while out there, I will be back soon.
Boat: 6.8m ally, Motor 200 Yam 4 stroke, 225lt fuel tank, 80lts in gerry cans under floor, 50lts fresh water, 1 large drinks esky with lower level filled with frozen 2lt water containers and topped with ice, 1 large fish and spare ice esky with lower level filled with frozen 2lt water containers and topped up with bags of ice, 1 50lts waeco for food. Used 60lts from Gero to Island, 120 cruising around and 65lts for return to Gero all in flat calm conditions, 60lts fuel spare at end of trip.

 Long but good day out on the water.  Conditions were very calm at sun up.

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Caught some bait first up and then headed north.  I tried my fresh crabs that I caught last night and got one pinkie but it was undersize about 40+ cm.  The wife caught two nice pinks, a 53 cm and a lovely old man humped snapper at 63 cm.  We trolled for a but a lost a couple of school maccie.   I then headed east on my own as the wind was picking up. Landed a nice 54 cm black spot tuskie.  :))  so a good day overall.

https://imageshack.us/a/img841/8601/7hfa.jpg 

Bit of a bumpy wet ride home across the "second channel" in about a 15 - 20 southerly (those who have done it will appreciate it)...

 Fished a slow day on the  5 fathom bank today and can anyone tell me what the first fish is also got 2 black ass good size and the dhue 51cm and returned 

It has been a long time coming, but yesterday the old man and I got out with Whitey and his crew from Jurien. It was my first time offshore from the WA coast....so I was pretty pumped as you can imagine.

Arrived Tuesday arvo and had a quick flick around Greenhead LB - knowing the conditions well, when the southerly failed to drop off after sunset I said to the old man "It it's still blowing like this by the time we get back to Jurien, tomorrow is gonna get messy".

The next day was messy. Left the ramp just before 5am and it was very lumpy. Not ideal for fishing, but especially not for a first timer like me. The southerly was blowing hard and by the time we got to the first drop we were all soaked.

First drop started productively. The old man pulled in a baldy within a few minutes. Soon after, the bloke fishing between us pulled up a dhu, then within a couple of minutes he was onto a pinky. So he had two keepers on the first drop. Things went quiet so Whitey made the call to hit up the next lump. That's where it went a bit pear shaped for me.

The next thing I know, I'm on the dunny cr*pping and puking at the same time. I've never been one to experience any type of motion sickness....but there is a first for everything I guess. I lost a good couple of hours but at least recovered to get back into the fishing for a few hours at the end.

Unfortunately the fishing was slow all day after that first drop. There was one you beaut pinky caught and a number of baldies, bluebone, red throat etc. Probably no more than 15 fish on the boat all up - despite the best efforts of the skipper and crew to put us on the spot. One of the deckies caught a nice Sambo - would have gone 15-20kg which was duly released. A couple of pups landed earlier in the day too while I was curled up on the deck.

Short of the long - I caught bugger all so for a first experience, it was enough to make me want to stick to chasing tailor and mulloway! However, I'll take nothing away from the Whitey and his crew. We must have hit 20 lumps of more trying to find the fish - it was just one of those days where they were not really on the bite and the conditions were awful. Whitey said to me on the way back in if the conditions had been forecasted he would never have run the boat that day.

Wouldn't hesitate to go back out with him and in fact will look to book something up for next summer (or next month if the mrs lets me..... :-p). Hopefully the fishing gods are a little kinder then. The boat is fantastic - great layout, lots of space and everything was really well run.

Of note, he is running the operation from Kalbarri this winter for the first time. If anyone is looking for a winter break.....there is your excuse :-)

Cheers

Buschy

 My report for today is that I have hopefully caught some of tomorrow's bait!  Fresh crabs that I hope the pinkies and tusk fish will feast upon... 

And some lucky bugger (not me) caught a lovely mulloway off the beach near the boat ramp.

Hi All,

First time poster, been waiting to catch something more worthwhile than a wrasse. 

Went out from Port Geographe yesterday at around 10am, with the plan of searching for some reef off Peppermint Beach to catch a skippy, my Navman was 'aquiring sattelites' so i didn't have much to go on, eventually got the GPS going after unplugging and replugging the cables numerous times but still nothing was biting so threw out some lures and headed toward the cape sitting around the 35m mark. Gave up on that after 40 mins and roared over out the back of Wright's Bank. The sounder was lit with bottom fish, i was catching a few various wrasse (my specialty) when a few fish started breaking the surface 5m from the boat. Looked up to the rocket launcher and saw my crusty old jarvis walker combo with a smiling jack lure sitting there, 2nd cast and it was on with a nice stripey, the whole fight i was looking at my brand new penn combo spooled up with 30lb fins braid wishing I had swapped the lure onto it. Didn't matter in the end as I swung the net under this tuna and into the boat. A quick search of the Fishwreckapeadia and I decided it was a striped tuna and the best option was to bleed it and take it home for the smoker (next one will be catch and release)

A few drops later and I caught this McCulloch's Scalyfin, it went straight back. Was going to put up a Fish ID post but searched and found it. I later took this as a sign that I was in a reefy area and will return here, found a few lumps around 2m with fish on them drifting around and marked them on the GPS. 

Next I hooked some unstoppable monster of the deep, fought with it for 30mins, I got it up off the bottom and then the battle began, I'd get half a metre and it would take 2, eventually the mono pulled through my allbright knot and that was that. I looked at the time, around 16:30 and figured it was time to go back to the ramp. Put in the waypoint for the Marina, 20 nautical miles away, looked around and the glassy conditions were gone, it was all choppy whitecaps. Managed to get back accross the bay at around 17kn, with my eyes going from the fuel gauge to the distance remaining and back again. Made it back no worries, boat on the trailer just as the sun was going down. 

Taking the little brother and his kids out on Saturday morning so hopefully will have something worth posting about again after that. 

Cheers for reading,

Robz

Here's a complimentary pic of my tub, upgraded from a 4.3m tinny about a month ago, hoping to catch a dhu or two soon to start recouping some of the cost

 From WESTAG:

Impressive 80mm growth in a little over 12 months, it pays to look after your released fish.
WESTAG RECAPTURES
TAG NO 77676
SPECIES DHUFISH
TAGGERS NAME R Mc 
RECAPTURES NAME Joel 
DATE TAGGED 31/03/2013
DATE RECAPTURED 22/04/2014
DAYS OUT 387
TAGGED LENGTH 480
RECAPTURED LENGTH 560
WEIGHT KG N/A
GROWTH 80
LOCATION TAGGED GPS 43metres
LOCATION RECAPTURED GPS
MOVEMENT 
FISH KEPT/RELEASED kept

R Mc is my daughter and caught this fish over a year ago 31/3/13. She did the deco stop to allow the fish to self vent at around 5m depth and that simple action that takes less than a minute meant that this fishes survival rate percentage increased dramatically. 80mm growth in a year meant Joel (whoever you are) not only has one of my fishing spots in his GPS , but also managed a legal size dhuie for tea.

Take care of your undersize fish guys and we can all enjoy a much bigger average size fish in the future.

 What are the chances of catching the same fish twice?  I lost a soft plastic to an unseen fish and about one hour later, fishing the same channel I caught a cod on a live bait.  When I unhooked him, low and behold inside his mouth is my soft plastic!  It was his lucky day, he was 46cm which is size for an estuary cod, but I wasn't 100% sure it was an estuary cod due the lighter colourings,  so I took that yucky plastic thing out of his mouth and released him.

Other than that got a few under sized pinks and blacks and kept an 800 mm Queensland school mackerel.

Took the boat down for the long weekend down to bunbury to go out with the family. Got a mooring so we didnt have to launch it every weekend. Was good fun weather was great pity we couldnt have got more fish but still happy with what we got here is a few pics. The last time the boat was in the water was last easter now its has a new trailer, fuel tank, anchor winch and a few other things. Gave the new artifical reef a go but there wasnt even a bite on it. At one point there was 8 boats sitting on it. Snapper was 600meters off the beach.

 Not much to report.  Slow day on the water.  Got tailed on the soft plastics numerous times, will cost me a fortune to restock...  got one really good solid hookup one a fish that dictated terms for a couple of minutes and try as I might I couldn't stop getting busted off. :(( then tried trolling without any luck....  empty esky at the end of the day.

 Hello all,

I tagged along with some mates on a trip down to Whitehills on Good Friday, we left Perth around 2:30PM and headed down through Mandurah with four vehicles.  We got to Whitehills around 4 and made our way onto the track, where at the beach entrance someone was being snatched out, so we all did the righty and dropped our tyres down before making our way onto the beach.  There were many groups of people fishing, but after stopping at one or two spots we sent one vehicle ahead to scout out any further opportunities and within a km we had found a good spot.  So we got all the vehicles in an started setting up for a nights fishing. 

At first the swell was pumping and there was alot of weed around and not much being caught besides a solitary whiting and a herring to Benno.  As the night wore on it dropped and was quite pleasant but still not a whole lot of fish.  I was getting close to rolling out my swag and crashing when around 3am Dan got a Mulloway around 70cms.  After seeing this I blissfully went to sleep to wake up in the morning and find the guys had landed 3 mulloway all around 70cms and a 52cm tailor within 45mins before it shut down again.

We got up around 8am to a few fuzzy heads before packing up and heading back around 10am.

Not a bad nights fishing in all.

Bryan

Two spotted mackerel released.  (One on the troll and one on a soft plastic)  and a 55cm rankin cod on a squidgey pro wriggler glow.

Good memories are meant to be kept for future viewing.

We used to take photos and tape recording our catches to keep for future viewing purpose.

Nowadays we have youtube channel. All our great catches are stored and uploaded to youtube and SHARE around.

I have a great year hunting for snakehead fishing in 2013 Thailand.

Here are my 2 parts series of my Giant Snakehead Chase 2013 collections.

Enjoys my works !!!

Share my video if you guys love my works. Thanks !!!

Fishing Video !!! Giant Snakehead 2013 Collections (Part 1/ 2) Fishing Thailand- BKKGUY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5g-3U6CPZo

Fishing Video !!! Giant Snakehead 2013 Collections (Part 2/ 2) Fishing Thailand- BKKGUY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5AixaL24TU

Thanks for watching !!!

Seems like Abrolhos pics are the flavor atm, haven't posted in a while but thought Id put this one up, was stocked! Went across with Mills

 A better day.  Double hookup on spanish mackerel but dropped one.   Landed the other.  Using a pilchard giant trembler and a deep diving red head rapala magnum.  Nice sized pinkie and a size black snapper.   Threw back what I think was a 38cm robinson sea bream.

https://imageshack.us/a/img834/8369/294p.jpg

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https://imageshack.us/a/img845/6558/u3mu.jpg

 Hi Guys,

Ijust put this vid together of some of the fishing over the last six months in India. Watching it now i wish we had filmed some more of our catches! :) At least it gives some idea of the country we fish on the west coast. Hope you enjoy,  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgxoX2S7aCM

All the best, Scott

www.worldbiker.blogspot.com

 On Tuesday I went down to Preston to finally fish, heading north about 5km along the beach to a likely gutter.
I heard that Bouvards was weeded out so fished the beach halfway from just before midday and was at it until sunset.
I managed to get some live herring and whiting later on for bait.
The highlight was a 4kg plus stray salmon that turned up at 3pm, and it was caught on a mulie.
The salmon went like a train and was a good fight even on 30lb braid given the amount of weed around.
I kept it in the shallows awhile to tire it out but that doesnt work as well for salmon.
So I ended up gritting my teeth and lugging the salmon and a mess of weed out of the water.
A few tailor were caught but only one was size.
I had a couple of decent runs around 4pm but the weed got in the way and I lost them.
The wind and weed picked up at sunset so I called it a day.

Hey all decided to head out to FFB off woodies last night with my bro. Had a run on a floated mulie within 10 sec of casting but pretty hairy ground and lost the fish and then rig after rig. Decided to go to d9 but didn't have the correct cords so found a little lump, anchored and burleyed hard. Pretty average ground and only pickers smashing our mulies...Pissing me off so decided to catch a herring and put it on whole on the gangs and floated it out...10min later BANG rod goes off like no tomorrow. Thinking ray at first but had head shakes so not ray. It then breached the surface out back of boat and thought hmmm maybe shark. Anyway after getting the anchor up (very wise idea) and the fish taking me all around and under the boat for 25min we finally saw colour. Was thinking sambo the whole time and after another 15-20min we got it close enough to see it was a friggin huge tuna. Playing it slowly there was just no give and take from either side even having reel on pretty much full lock whilst the tuna was doing circle after circle on its side. Anyway finally got it boatside from the front of the boat and my bro gaffed it beautifully through the head. On board massive high fives and much shouting was to be had. We were just amazed at getting my first tuna on a full moon in 7m of water. We bled it and kept it on ice overnight and weighed it the next morning weighing in at 20.1KG and measuring 120cm. Could hardly lift the fish after the fight lol. Sorry pics aren't the greatest.

 still around. .this one bit smaller than than last 2...14.5 kg

just got back from a week in each of exmouth and coral bay. was essentially a family trip with a few fishing days thrown in. most pics are from gopro footage as we were a bit light on with cameras other than the phone

headed straight out when we got to exmouth and got into some tuna schools on small slices. got  out a bit deeper and got a smallish goldband reasonably quickly, but then got sharked everywhere we went for the rest of the afternoon so headed back. the next day we went out we stayed inside the gulf but pretty quiet sgain, with nothing worth keeping.

so with things not looking goog we tried something different with some shallow trolling and ended up having some fun on little mackies, small cod, a rankin cod (in 5m) some barracuda and a few other bits and pieces. good fun but again not much for the dinner plate.

next time we went out fishing we went to tantas and decided to have our first crack at a billfish. after again getting distracted with tuna, it didn't take long to hook up to the first which went to my mums partner (on his birthday). he fought it for a long time and we eventually landed it despite his lack of fishing experience 

we the started trolling again looking for some ground to have a drop on if the weather got better and again it wasn't too long until my rod went off. was a smaller but far livelier black and was great fun to land.

yes he is upside down, and yes he jumped from in front of my brother who was trying to land him. for reference, it is 4m from where my brother is standing to the back of the boat. big jump...video is here youtu.be/orMg5H-Qhpk

so we were now a bit over an hour in to our billfishing and had landed two blacks. we also had two sick deckies as it was prettty rough, so we decided to troll back towards the reef to have some lunch and calm down a bit. then the other rod went off with a nice dollie for my brother somewhere around the 50m mark.

so that was another first as none of us had ever caught one. the weather didn't let up so we headed back early to the gulf and had a quick troll where we picked up a trout which was cooked whole that night to go with the dollie. we tried one more time out of exmouth but despite good fish shows there was nothing happening.

after that we packed up and went to coral bay. we only headed out once but it was a great day. beautiful conditions and i got to take the wife out as we had a babysitter lined up. another big thanks to my brother for keeping the sharks busy whilst i landed my spanglie

the wife getting onto something that looked and sounded far more exciting than it was...

and finally, the quality coming to the surface without getting devoured by a hungry shark. all ended up with a few reds (this being the best) and a couple of spanglies which were all of good size.

was a great trip for both a bit of fishing as well as for the family. long way to tow a big boat but worth it in the end. and the jeep didn't even break down once.

p.s. cheers to those on this forum that offered advice (i wont name them as i don't want them inundated with pm's but you know who you are).

p.p.s. also saw the usual dolphins, turtles etc but had my first ever sighting of a free jumping malin (3 different times) as well as a dugong

 Left friday, overnight in northampton. Arrived and set up saturday.  More setup sunday, launch the boat and get the mooring setup.  A push bike repair for the ten yr old son and a lost mobile phone of the 11 yr old daughter's friend meant no fishing yesterday. Phone found and handed in thankfully :)

Keep hearing that fish are heard to find this year.  Something about the hot summer has killed off a lot of the seagrass and taken away the natural hiding habitat of the smaller fish so the bigger ones have moved out to deeper water???

Got out for a fish today.  Out early trolling, no luck.  Tried some bottom bouncing at some known spots, and no keepers.  Trolled again, nothing.

One last go with the jigs for me, bait and trusty handline for the wife.  It was after three in the afternoon when we started our last drift.  And then, bam! In ten minutes we had two pink snapper in the esky, released another couple just undersize, one black snapper in the esky (all caught by the missus on the trusty handline)  and then I contributed with a 60cm estuary cod.  And they went off the bite as quick as they came on.  I reckon it coincided with the slack water, but i'm no expert...

No photos, sorry but it all happened so quick....

Maybe photos tomorrow.

 Got a 5 kg salmon behind 5 fathom bank yesterday evening a very good sign for this metro season

I took advantage of the good conditions on Saturday for my first trip out to the FADs.

We got up at 4am, in the water by 5:30 and at the Fremantle Sail Club FAD around 7 am. We couldn't find the thing at first, it wasn't where our plotter was telling us, but luckly there was another boat out there which we followed to it. I was surprised how fast the current moves out there. Without any wind, our boat was drifting at about 2 knots.

We could see the dollies swimming under the boat on the first pass and had a few follows on our soft plastics, but no bites initially. On the second pass my mate dropped a mullie over the side and managed to hook up to one.

On the pass after that I managed to hook onto one with my soft plastic.

There were lots of similar sized dollies in the water following the boat, but they weren't that interested in anything we threw at them. Lots of follows but no bites.

At about 9am they shut down completely and disappeared.

My friend also decided to drop a bait down 250 meters to the bottom to see what was there. After about 10 minutes of manually winding in, he pulled in this kifejaw.

After that we headed over to the club marine FAD, but there didn't seem to be any fish around that one.

We spent the rest of the day bottom bashing around rottnest without much luck. The weather was fantastic, no wind until about 3pm.

Caught one of these guys fishing for herring off woodman point. after about half an hour searching through the species id guide i belive its a senator wrasse, is this and unsusual capture for the area or they pretty common around? was only a little guy bout 25cm so he went back ok after this quick photo. otherwise ok trip, managed to land 3 herring between 21 and 26cm and hooked a few more but all managed to throw the hooks doing spins and jumps, which i was never able to witness presviously having only caught them off the beach. a bit more respect for the humble herring after today, bit more of a challenge off the rocks than i expected, despite the massive amount of them in the water around the berley had a hard time landing them. so at the very least it was a great learning experience with different rigs and styles and some herring fillets that im having a go at pickling.

Niko

 Managed a days fishing in perfect weather conditions yesterday. We skipped the usual whiting safety net and headed out to try and get a few table fish. I hit a few favourite lumps along the way and also found a few new ones with fish on them, so I was a happy camper.

First fish on deck was a tagged Dhuie I had caught in September last year. I will have to review my data to find out a bit more about it, but essentially it had only grown around 0.5cm in that time.

Close up of tag with weed algae build up.

Close up with weed / aglae cleared off.

We managed a few good Blackarse including this one by Tim.

We hit another lump and I recaptured anothr fish. This time a Breaksea cod. (note the tag is missing about 1cm off the end so what nipped that off I have no idea???

Apart from an assortment of Baldies, Pinkies, and 7 dhuies of which I tagged a few more, I managed one half decent Dhuie of around 70cm. All in all a great day on the water but it was difficult to get a consistent bite going and the bigger fish (whilst cklearly showing on the sounder) just weren't interested.

hey all, anything getting caught during the day around woodman point or the asi atm? was planing on heading down tomoro but prior commitments mean cant stay late, latest bout 4pm. was just hoping for some herring or skippy would be nice, light gear, burley etc.

cheers

Niko

 Shallow dive NOR this morning.

Light winds, great vis, not a lot of swell and heaps of crays around. Can't ask for much more...

cheers

brett

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2014/04/12/14/08/fisherman-finds-vibrator-in-cod-s-stomach

what can one say!

 bit of new ground..fished solo released a few good fish today