I needed some squid for a seafood bonanza I've got planned for when my Dad visits in a few weeks and with the forecast today was going to be the day. Seeing it was a public holiday and the ramp would be packed, I decided to beat the crowd and launch super early to have a crack at a snapper before first light. I'd anchored up by 5.30am, floated out my first bait and had just chucked in the first few cubes of mulie when the rod came to life. A lot of head shakes and a few good runs and pulled the hooks! Bummer. Another bait in and I'll save you the reading but the next hour produced 3 dhuies to 13kg, 2 snapper, a dozen sambos and a few nice skippy, all released except the biggest dhufish.

Excuse the self portrait, and no, this isn't the spot, it was taken while I was squidding.

I felt like celebrating but seeing as there were no beers in the boat I decided to have my brekky instead and thought I'd bust a myth while I was at it:

I then left the spot, grabbed some squid and beat the retrieve rush, home in time for lunch with a fair lump of seafood and all using 8 litres of fuel. My kind of day.
Tim

Chris (Chrisp) had made plans to take out a few clients for a fish & also invited me out in hope that we would get some quality fish on jigs & soft plastics.

Excuse my ignorance; however, the name of the Two Rocks based charter company escapes me.

Fortunately, the weather gods softened the conditions slightly & out trip wasn’t cancelled. The forecast indicated moderate easterlies with a considerable swell which would taper off throughout the day. The early morning conditions were comfortable, however, the conditions deteriorated later in the day & staying inside the boat almost became a challenge.

Our aim was to use a variety of jigs & soft plastics in search of some demersal fish. In particular, I was keen to catch my first Dhu given that Pearl Perch was a regular catch for me over east.

Chris & I also had relatively new outfits that needed to be run in.

First up, we decided to use soft plastics just as the sun was making an appearance through the clouds. Within 30 seconds, I was on. It was a solid fish & the 10lb line I was using had me worried. A few minutes later, Mr. Knobby hit the deck.

We persisted to use soft plastics for the first half hour & Chris landed a small pinky & Dhu bait.

The wind picked up significantly & holding ground with light artificials became a challenge. Next up, jigs hit the bottom.  Moments later, I landed my first Dhu. He wasn’t big, but Pearl Perch size in comparison. I was quite satisfied nonetheless to have landed my first on a jig. Chris also scored a baldy on jig.

Chris’ clients persevered with bait & landed some nice fish between them with the standout being a good size snapper.

Later in the morning, Chris decided to revert back to a large soft plastic & hooked up to something solid. Unfortunately, the fish threw the jig head. Chris inspected the artificial offering to find the plastic had been completely molested. Inherent signs of a Dhu grab.

At one stage, I caught Chris master baiting, however, it was a short lived exercise after landing a black ass.

Chris was having a spate of bad luck, however, this was about to change once the skipper yelled out to prepare for our last drift.

Another large plastic was rigged up & dropped to the bottom. A few minutes later, Chris had a hit & lowered the plastic down in hope for a good strike. Right on cue, Chris set the hook into something very solid. A good fight later, he landed an 11.5kg Dhu (a PB on soft plastic).

It was quite an enjoyable trip despite the conditions with Chris’ Dhu being the standout. Great company, good fish & a few beers.

Thankfully, we arrived at my joint & Sam had just finished baking a banana cake. Mmmm... good way to finish a cold day.

Daz

Anyone able to give a progress report? Looks a bit blowy down that way.

Have just got the latest weights for this years Carnarfin fishing comp.

Spanish mack 36.6 new record

Tuna 20.85

Pink snapper 6.01

Spangled emperor 5.66

Black snapper 3.48

Coral trout 7.00

Mulloway 11.45

Red emperor 10.65

Cobia 11.2

Bream 1.25

Flathead 1.05

Trevally 10.71

Tailor 1.58

Whiting .458

Baldchin 5.5

Mangrove jack 1.58

Sorry for no pics to put up, have only spent 15 mins at weigh ins before phone calls me back to sea rescue duties with over due vessels.

Well, today was almost the perfect day at work.  Headed out this morning chasing dollies and had to work hard in average northerly conditions, we ended up finding a small striped tuna and then a decent black marlin that spent more time out of the water than in.  Continuing the search we only had one other hit for the day and didn't hook up, which was rather disappointing seeing as the water was quite blue and the temperature still within an acceptable pelagic range.  After having enough of the shitty conditions we headed back to the farm to clean the boat and get ready for the usual Thursday afternoon meeting.  Once the boat was clean we decided that we had to go and try and finish one of the jobs the boss had asked us to do, get rid of the barra from the settlement ponds. 

Last Thursday we had been down and got a few out and had some awesome jump shots, this time I decided to take the DLSR to get some of the action on film.  Of course, soon as a camera appears the fish go shy and we can't get any.  Seeing as we wanted to get a few mullet out of there as well for livies down the track, we took the throw net....  A few beers later and well, what do you know, Richo doing what Richo does best and well... Here are the results. :)

Cheers,

Adam

Headed out wide today 85m, payed of for Jesse with a nice 15kg fish.Came in a little closer after lunch and picked up a nice 10kg fish and a baldie.nice day on the water.

Well we hit the spot we got the dhuies on last Saturday. The swell was up a bit and via was not good but we were keen to have a go. After a long drop down the anchor line we set the anchor and moved away, not looking to good flat rock and sand patches.After swimming 20m in could see a dark rise in front of me and headed over to a nice edge and a lump about a meter high with some nice coral. Thing were hard to make out. Then as we came up on the lump there they were fish and plenty of them ,dhuies all around us could have been up to 15 dhuies, from 2-7kg ,baldies and sand snapper ,snapper,harliquin,bb,red snapper,skippy the water was full of fish .As the viz was poor no good taking pics as they would not have shown much .When the water clears up I will get some video and pics of this spot ,we got one dhuies and a nice baldie for dinner got a big female cray for the pic and released her. I think we only seen a small area as we were not too keen to swim far from the anchor,Ther is another lump 50m inside this one all so has good fish .I reacon any little ledge or crack will have good fish .We did a couple of drifts over nwith a line down and no takers ,just shows .. next time will do two up two down and have a good swim around.

Went to woodies today for a look, saw few people luck into some salmon action.

Big school just off the end, plenty of birds, unlucky for the fishos, bit far out.. but they were there!

Good to see them still around and in good numbers 

Gday

Made the most of the perfect weather over the weekend and thought it'd be a perfect opportunity to go hunt some bream in one of my favourite spots in the swan.  First time for the year so we were anxious to catch a few, it also helped get me, my brother Dave and cousin Matt out of the warm confines of our beds at 5:00am in the morning cold.  Dave set the bar immediately with his first cast producing a healthy 25cm bream (released).

It was a great start to the mornings fishing with my first cast also producing a fat 40cm bream a personal best (released). A very healthy specimen with a weight estimated at easily a kilo+.  Plenty of interest contined all morning but we had an unusually high amount of missed hookups. Obviously out of touch with their fussy nature and awesome ability to find structure we decided to keep it a short stint and try again later that afternoon.

Upon returning to the area again in the afternoon the fishing session began the same way, with myself immediately within 2mins of arriving and casting, i set the hooks and landed another plump bream of 30cm.

This was followed by my cousin landing his first ever bream of 28cm. The grin on his face was priceless. He didnt think he'd ever land one. His was accompanied by Dave's ever increasing tally another 30cm specimen not to long after.

We had plenty of fish around so much so that fish (that we were unable to identify) were leaping in and out of the water of the same vicinity we were fishing. Something substantial may have been chasing them so this kept us interested for an hour or so, hoping it would make its way to one of our rods. No luck tho but we were happy to see Matthew once again fighting a decent sized bream that was taking drag and heading for the cover of a low lying tree. He managed to escort it out but did snag it on a log. Dave was able to walk along the log in the water and undo the line as for matthew to land a new personal best bream of 32cm. Ecstatic with our efforts we decided to stick at a bit longer, to no avail.

Time passed and the fish were becoming less aggressive, the evidence of the tide slowly dropping started to show once submerged logs in the water we were fishing. This accompanied with the warming sunlight slowly fading we decided to pack it up and head home before any mozzies could make short work of our limbs. All in all it was a very entertaining 2 sessions of bream fishing, with plenty of fish about and 2 pb's to top it off. All fish were in remarkable condition and had obviously been eating well, so we were glad to see them all released and ready to fight another day.

cheers

What a flat day this was, me and Doz left Ray behind to baby sit his retarded friend Norm, did they miss out or what lol

Doz was keen for his first his first Red, after a slow morning he came up with the goods in the arvo. 62cm Red, not a bad first. Other firsts for Doz, Rankin, Spanglie, Darktail Snapper and the biggest Robinsons Seabream caught on my boat 61cm. I caught a nice Robbo and Crimson in between fighting the sharks. 

The best bit was the look on Rays face when we got back lol lol

I took the clowns out Marlin fishing on there second day, only had one hit and we somehow managed to get it in. I was relieved to boat this one after fighting a 100+kg one for 3 hours a few days early only to have it snap of boat side.

The Vic Clowns Ray & Doz came up for Comp . We hit the back of the Islands and found a huge of jobfish. Doz got a double header, not a bad start.

We tried a different spot and I hooked a massive cod.

The Rankin is from the first day of the Comp, got me second place.

The Red came from the back of the Islands. The Rankin and Spango came from the shallows in Helby Bank, both released. I love the colour on the Rankins from the shallows.

The Whale Shark was a first for us, it came up right next to the boat

The bottom pic is a bait balll getting smashed by Birds, Sharks & Tuna, I parked the boat right next to the bait ball, it was amazing seeing the Tuna and Sharks hitting them.

Well I'm back to work tomorrow after 6 weeks off .  I thought I would upload a few pics to remind myself of the excellent time I had in Coral Bay & Exmouth

Got a message from my mate scano around 10am Sunday saying 'weathers looking good should go for a fish'.

Didnt take much to convince me, so i packed the gear in the boat, and he arrived at my place about 1pm. Plan was to go out into the sound and find some squid, herring etc.

I did pak the bigger gear just incase it was nice and flat and we wanted to hit 5 fatham.

On the water on our way by 2pm from woodies. First stop ont he squid grounds about 4 or 5 minutes away. Unfortunately the water clarity was crap, so didnt have high hopes of finding many squid. However first cast with a pink jig and first squid!!! things were looking good....but after about 20 minutes it was the only one we found.

With the weather looking the goods i said, stuff it lets head out deep and see if we can find a pinky. Ive found some good coral lumps in recent times, and am always finding good fish on them, so was slightly confident we could find something....hopefully something pink.

Out we went, getting to our destination around 3pm. We were only planning on fishing a couple hours anyway, so down went the lineson the first spot....2 seconds later i had a fish on. Nothing big but none the less a fish!. Up it came slowly and was a healthy looking dhu around 40cm. On the release weight and back down he went.

Reset the drift and down we went again. This time rod loaded up and whatever it was gave 2 kicks of the tail and it was all over, busted the 80lb leader :( (i only fish 30lb in metro waters, so this was a little bit fo a shock.)

Got a little quiet on this lump on the next couple of drifts, with a few small BB's and some sweep coming up, so made the move to another piece of croal not far away. As i said to Scano, this ground most people i doubt would fish on, because even going over it at 5-6 knots, you cant see the definition, its only when you drift at 1 knot or so you can see it.

So lined up on the drift and down the lines went... First drift resulted in 2 more BB's one being 44cm so in the ice box he went. The other back on the release weight.
Reset the drift agaion and down the lines went....few seconds past and bang im on again, this time a much better fish, which was pulling some line... After 4 or so minutes a nice 56cm (guessed 4kg) baldie hit the surface..you ripper. I rate baldie the best eating metro fish, and have mnaged to get a few in this area. High 5's and high hopes!

At this stage the sounder was lit up like a Christmas tree and there were fish everywhere.

So reset for another drift and down we went.... Wait 5 seconds...wait 10 seconds, and bang, Scano is on... This time a Solid fish, and probably the biggest he's landed on his new light weight bottom bashing setup. Takes it nice and slow, and the call was Dhu!! 6 or 7 minutes later it floats to the surface... you ripper! 9kg Dhu. To say we were happy was an under statement. We had only been fishing this area for an hour and a half and managed some great fish!

Reset the drift again, as the sounder was glowing still, and down we went... this time again Scano loads up. Not quite as big but looks decent!! 2 minutes later one of the bigger BB's Ive seen comes up! didnt measure but would say over 50 no worries.

So that was our limit of 4 fish and we were happy. During the landing of fish, we did manage to bust off on some ripper fish too, 1 im pretty sure was another big dhu, which came off the same spot the 9kg one did...Plus landing a few swallowtail, skippy, and other bits and pieces.

Good to see some metro waters are still full of fish life, and provide some good fishing! No pinkys which i thought was unusual, but none the less plenty of other fish!! all in a couple of hours too!

Just so happens this trip i wasnt expecting too much, so didnt bring the camera...mistake! but did take the only pic with the phone, soory about the quality.

Sunday look like a great day up at 5:30 loaded the boat and we hit the ramp around 6:45,and yes we had the camera. The wind was a little lighter than yesterday and looked like it was going to stay light ,but after the sun came up the wind picked up and the drift also came in .There seemed to be a current from the north which was speeding up the drift .Well we got to the first spot in short time and the sounder lit up.  Everyone was getting toeie as I rounded up on the spot .Ok I called and down the lines went ,a minute passed and then another not a bite.Ok pull up I will set you up over the spot again mmmmmmm nothing .We moved from spot to spot with the same at each patch we stopped at.How things change over 24 hours, fish on all the spots but no takers ,well nothing big,all fish bar two were undersized and all went back. We covered a lot of ground and did get a few small fish ,4 dhuies 5 snapper,4 skippy,1 red snapper ,1 sambo, But nothing like yesterday.Sorry no big fish pics but somthing is better than nothing We are going to have a dive on the spot we got the fish on on saturday during the week so will take the camera and see what is down there.

We went out yesterday arvo and set up for Prawning around sundown.  Once again it looked to be a busy night on the water with plenty of boats out.  As it got darker, all the prawning lights turned on and all the focus was on the outgoing tide.  It didnt take long before we saw the first one and soon after, Jane boated the first prawn.  Jane also scooped the fishie in the second photo, im guessing it for a juvenile flathead or possibly a gurnard. After that the prawns picked up with many diving deep, but in all about 20 odd netted over the few hours to 7:30-8pm when the tide slowed and so did the prawns.

Our boat was only in 2mts, and though the tide was still going out, it was nothing compared to the other week when I freedived and was covering 20 mts in a breath.  I swam upriver only 40-50 mts, and headed out a little deeper to about 6mts tops and in a few mins bagged 5 nice big crabs and was on my way back to the boat.  I must have seen 50+ crabs, with the majority undersize, but the size ones were all 150mm +.  I also saw heaps of prawns and I think I will have to get a small dab net because it looked far easier than waiting on the boat for them to come to us. Anyway, back into the boat, out of the wettie, a quick towel off and back into my ugg boots and jumper and we were on our way back to the ramp for 10pm. Home by 10:30 for the super14 final at 11.

Marine and Harbours were on site at sundown, and stopped me from anchoring in the channel, which I didnt even know was there as the lights/markers in that section of the river, and an inside and outside channel are deceptive.  Also made sure we had our anchor lights and a white allrounder.  However they were noowhere to be seen when the Gin Palaces came through all night at stupid speeds in the channel with heaps of small boats on either side.

A few people had said all the crabs they saw were female, so they didnt bother taking them.  A couple of the ones I got were females, but they werent berried so I took them.   Am I doing anything wrong/illegal? I have read posts by Ryan Thipthorp and he said he appreciates the sweeter flavour of the females over the males.  Is there a perception that bagging females is wrong?

Anyway a good night was had and I am looking forward to a seafood lunch!

Decided to head out to the FFB late this afternoon, thought I might do a sunset / evening session and hopefully get onto some pinks and skippy.

Started by anchoring in 9-10m of water and got the burley flowing straight away.  It didn't take long for some good sized herring to come in so we quickly flicked out some light lines and pulled in a bit of fresh bait (now tea for tomorrow night because we had a few left over!).  They went off the bite pretty quickly so we dropped some bigger baits down and began to settle in.

About 1/2 hour later Jamin's rod went off and after a short fight he brought up his ever first Port Jackson (he doesn't fish much ). 

Shortly after that he was on again but this one was what we came for, except it wasn't size - a 400mm pinkie.

We stayed there for another hour and a half with an intermitant burley stream going and in that time I managed to pull in the largest, and most boring fighting, PJ that I've ever caught. As well as that was a 600mm pink, a 450mm pink, two smoking runs that we didn't manage to set the hooks on,another PJ and got bitten off as well.  All in all there was plenty of entertainment anyway.

We decided to go a bit deeper and did a few drifts this time but there wasn't anything going on so we decided to head in.  We were coming through the entrance between Carnac and Garden Islands when I noticed a boat about 250m away flashing us with their torch so went over there to see what was going on. Ended up towing some poor dude and his (approx) 10 and 13yo daughters in whose motor wouldn't start. He'd called out Sea Rescue but by the time they arrived we had them connected up and had been towing them for 10 mins, after a brief chat we told them we'd take them back to the Woodies ramp.

All in all it was quite an eventful night. Very nice out there on the water and not too cold either.

Well I will start with an apology, I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera so there are no pics .Headed out from Two Rocks at 7:00 only 4 boats out which was a bit of a surprise .The plane was to head out deep but the wind was already up to 15-18 knots so the skipper called off the deep run opting for the shallow 25-30m stuff .Well that did prove a good decision as we found dhuies snapper and Skippy on all four patches we went to .First patch and double hook-up first drop two dhuies both undersize and both released in great condition .Next drift and a snapper and a dhuie were hooked, once again undersize so back down to fight another day. We moved out to a patch we get some bigger fish of and It didn't let us down with four more dhuies coming up ,biggest 6kg and a keeper the others were size but as it was early we released them ,then the fish of the day smocked Jody ,a big dhuie we would call around the 20kg but half way up was dropped $#@#$%%^.The wind still wasn't dropping and I headed in a little closer to some marks I have never fished on before .Rounding up on the first mark a school of fish lit up the sounder ,I stopped the boat and called for all to drop BANG triple hook up mine a dhu 6kg Jesse 5kg as Jody had the biggest still coming up we released both ,as we looked over the side to see a big silver fish hit the surface ,shit Sambo $%$%$%$.OK back for another drift and triple hook-up again this time a nice snapper 470mm dam undersize ,and two more dhuies and a sambo ,we got two more small dhuies and some nice Skippy of this patch as well .The fish shut down from us releasing fish so we move to another spot 50m away ,and you guessed it double hook up dhuies .Yes a 6kg fish and our dhuie bag was finally reached ,one more drift and another dhuie. Well this was a great day out fishing and we only used $30 of fuel. 15 dhuies in total two 6kg fish kept for dinner all other fish released in good condition, needed the release weight for only two. 7 of the 15 were size up to 7kg and the rest were downwards to a small 200mm fish also ,four sambos all released five snapper all released ,sergeant backer and wrasse also a big sting-ray, some good fish dropped as well .well I think I’ll head back out for round two and see if that big dhuie is still hanging around.

Well, I’ve just got back from a 5 day trip to the Three Kings islands off the northern tip of New Zealand onboard “Pursuit” with Rick Pollock. The Kings are famous for fishing, in particular yellowtail kingfish jigging, and it lived up to its name. To say I was happy with the trip would be an understatement, it was awesome and I’ll definitely be going back again. As I was a single booking, Boulder from Boulder Guiding http://www.boulderguiding.co.nz/ helped me get on a boat as it is pretty hard to get a spot without booking the whole boat. He arranged everything for me, including the use of a heap of good gear including Jigging Master and Jigstar rods, Jigging Master, Accurate and Shimano reels, plus a full arsenal of 37kg trolling gear, lures, jigs, hooks, spare line, EVERYTHING!
We boarded Pursuit on a Tuesday afternoon at the beautiful Mangonui wharf and met the crew- Rick, Zane and Sam. The rest of the charter was made up of 5 other Kiwi’s, all great guys including Josh who gets on here a bit as “Accident Prone”. We had an absolute mountain of top notch fishing gear that would have conservatively totalled over $75,000. Needless to say we ran out of rod holders pretty quickly.

A early departure the next morning and we were jigging a reef off North Cape by lunchtime where we all pulled up kings of varying size, with the highlight being a 20kg (I think, we caught that many they all blur into one) fish by Josh on his 150g Synit rod and Stella 6000. We departed shortly after as we had another 50nm to run to the Kings where we arrived in the dark. Pursuit travels at a pretty economical 9-10kts so we trolled a spread of marlin lures everywhere we went.

While we were blessed with awesome travelling weather, the forecast changed suddenly overnight and we woke on Thursday to lots of rain and an easy 30kts of wind so it was decided to hang in close to the Princes Group, where we discovered something we were hoping for but not expecting- surface lure action on the kings. Josh started us off by chucking a Fisherman stickbait and landing a great king of pretty close to 30kg after a tough fight on a 8’ rod.

We ended up getting over 10 kingies for the day, with over half coming off the surface and the others on livies fished down deeper. The weather for that night blew up even more, meaning a pretty sleepless night for Rick and Zane, who had to keep re-anchoring the boat and maintaining an anchor watch so we didn’t end up somewhere we didn’t want to be.

Friday came with clearer skies and a fast improving forecast, so we started with a little in close fishing where I nailed probably my fish of the trip, a 13kg kingy on a popper cast at a wave washed bombie. Rick and I saw the strike and were stoked when it came aboard. That was something I definitely wasn’t expecting.

We did a little more surface stuff, plus a little sight seeing. The Three Kings sit at around 34 degrees South, which is about the same as Bremer Bay/Albany, and you can see this in the type of coastline.

With the weather improving by the minute, Rick made a big call we were all stoked with- we were going to spend the arvo on the Middlesex Bank- one of the 2 main banks around the Three Kings. This is where big fish live and it didn’t take long to find some. The first 2 fish up were good Hapuka, them Boulder managed to extract a 52kg bass (wreckfish) from the reef. There are photos around but I don’t have them so you’ll have to use your imagination. We all got amongst some bass on both bait and jigs, and Bear snuck down a soft plastic on a Saltist 20 with 20lb line and had on a 15kg bass before he hit the bottom.

Fair bucket of fish meat!

Saturday we all voted on hitting the King Bank to have a marlin fish, then chase some of the bigger kings we all wanted to land. Upon hitting the bank, Rick called out “marlin!” and we all jumped to attention. The boys had put me on strike because they had all landed striped marlin before, and as I was clipping the belt on we watched a 110kg stripie dart and slide amongst the lures. It was not hitting them so Zane lobbed back a livie which got mouthed but failed to hook up. Bummer but no one was too disappointed, we still had kings to catch and besides, if I landed everything first trip I wouldn’t have an excuse to come back.

We pulled the lures in and Rick found some bottom, first up were quite a few bass, not what we were really looking for but good fun on jigs nonetheless. A short shift and the call was kingies, and they sure were.

These were all 15-30kg fish and were pretty keen on the jigs. It isn’t like sambo jigging where you drop, lift and you’re on, you actually have to jig well and think about jigs and techniques, but the rewards were there. We had multiple hook ups and Josh landed the biggest again at 30kg.

Rick tags all of the kings he releases and has had recaptures all over NZ and even on the east coast of Australia, which is a straight line swim of over 1100nm or 2030km. Pretty amazing for kingies.

The next day was our last and we had plans for a blue nose (blue warehou) fish on the way home but seeing as this is done on 350m of water, old Huey had other ideas. Steve and I had big kingies flashing in our eyes again but we all decided to have a soft plastic snapper fish instead. Drifting along in 40m of water in Parangarenga Harbour (place names are hard to say over there), we landed around half a dozen, with the last fish taken by yours truely at a “pretty happy with” 9.2kg or 20 good old fashioned pounds taken on a “fanta” coloured McCarthy placcy and on light gear.

We tied back up at a drizzly Mangonui wharf later that arvo and my long awaited trip was over. As we were unpacking 3 or 4 Orcas (killer whales) came right along the boat chasing stingrays and put on a show for around 30 minutes, catching a few and giving us a good look at them from only a few metres away. It’s a real pity it was raining as it was the perfect photo opportunity.

Like I said earlier, it was an awesome trip with things to do in all weather, Rick and the crew couldn’t have been better, the boat was perfect and the company was excellent. While we didn't get any massive kings, I am going again and am keen to take some WA people along too. Rick wants to get some West Aussies over to confirm which fights harder-kingies or sambos, so why not. We could probably fit in a trip in May 2011 (March and April are booked out) or if you want to wait a little, get March or April 2012 for the more stable weather and better marlin numbers. For info my whole trip cost $2600AUD total for 8 days away (5 days fishing, 2 flying, 1 driving). This includes all flights from Perth to Auckland, food, charter, everything! Compare that to some of the Australian trips and it is the best value charter in the world I reckon, I know I’ll go again. So, who wants to come???? PM me if you do and we can have a little pow wow about dates and numbers.
ps. Kingies are tougher, they fight all the way to the boat.
Catchya,
Tim

A great time was had in Exmouth despite the numerous bad weather days.  We punched it out every day and did as much as the conditions would allow.

Many thanks to Till and Alfred -  two of the best deckies about.  Life was much easier with two competent lads onboard in the sometimes trying conditions.

Many thanks Adam and crew for organising the comp and for your hospitality for the presentation night.  Big kudos to the various prize sponsors too.

Well Team Social did some damage and it wasn’t to the Exmouth fish stocks.

We had;

A full teaser lost as a welded ring on a swivel failed.

Smashed cup holder on the boat (Jamie lost balance in the rough water)

I snapped my Pflueger Medalist  trying to leader a long tail tuna in (the crew were busy on fish)

Jamies new rod ( some fancy 2 piece), became a 3 piece from a back cast from someone on the boat.

A few eye lets went missing in action.

Dented marlin board from Jamies head (lucky he didn't go unconcious - it was a big hit..ouch)

Busted toes

Weld on bowrail failed

2 inch split in prop blade from turtle strike

Chipped transom corner from bundegi  jetty strike

New 27 Mhz aerial fell apart

Destroyed Soft Oscar from Spaniard in 70 metres

Snapped rod gimbal from big marlin

Spooled 15kg reel whilst doing 21 knots (who can hear a ratchet at that speed)

Soiled jocks from shark attack whilst swimming with Whale sharks.

Oh well , we had fun.

 A few pics;

Typical day out from Tantas

The spread;

First stick face aboard my boat;

 (appropriate it was my strike too!)

Sucker fish from the Marlin;

Dolly Release;

Something from the gulf;

Last day in Exy – heading for Long Island;

Only cray for the trip;

Popped Trev coming in;

One of many Whale Shark encounters;

Sea snake;

Moray;

Deco Time  (thanks Gully & Ewan for a great dive);

Till next year.

Cheers Pete

gday crew....

thought id post up a bit of a thread on a quickie i did to the abrolhos last thursday. Main plan was to spear again with my buddy rob but first priority was to get the girl onto a good dhu. Fished some of my really hot spots but the fish where just shut down - strong north current didnt help at all. In the end with time slipping away she was content with her pb groper of about 6kg... a very nice fish indeed... we did catch 3 just legal dhus along with 2 big trout and another couple of baldies but these where released as rob and i wanted to throw some jewelery around for a nice trout or groper to wear!

Ended up doing 3 different drops - the first promised a bit but after doing a few dives we moved on - seen one thumper groper that didnt wanna play and left a nice trout in the hope of something bigger. rob picked off a 60cm groper to open the account... some of the ledges full of crays have to be seen to be believed.. the 2 pics i have here are nothing compared to what is there... amazing to see crays so thick standing on top of each other off the roof the works... and they are almost all well over size... a shame we are not aloud to nab a couple at the abrolhos.. anyways back to diving and the 2nd spot proved fruitless.... murky water in 14m with a 30m drop not far beyond didnt feel all that comfortable and the lack of fish didnt help either...

the 3rd spot was unbelieveable - took abit of coverage to find in 9m but suddenly the fishlife just blew us away... the amount of buff bream phenominal mixed in with countless big skippy and big sand snapper some that where well over 8kgs... again ledges full of crays everywhere and the odd nice baldie about.. i knocked off a nice one not long into the dive after chasing it with the safety on lol - one silly groper thats for sure... then we stumbled along the trout honey hole... they appeared from everyyyyywhere! i got the biggest of the 2 at 680mm not a monster but a damn nice fish.. this bugger didnt wanna know me took 3 dives to knock off but in the end a long shot ended his day... this spot was unreal and after stoning our last fish a beaut groper right under the boat rob and i took the cameras back and spent maybe 1hr chasing picks... the trout where co-operative with one thumper bearing the scar from a spearo from awhile back... there would have been maybe 10-15trout in a space of 20m square it was awesome...

anyways hope u enjoy the quick write up and pics crew

poddyfish! 

A few pics taken by Pete D.

On watch duty




Hooked up to my first gulf longtail




Caught on a Jackson Pintail Tune, Major Craft OB 76M and a Diawa Seagate 4500H




This was the first of several thru the trip and a decent size too!






Rankin




Baby mahi mahi

Five of us keen lads hit up Yanchep this morning for a bit of a bash at 4am. With moon up, sun up and high tide occurring around the same time, plus some blustery weather it looked like it was going to be a great morning to fish for some tailor.

My first and only bite was from a big lump of seaweed. My mate Simmo Ryan on the other hand, trying out his Nuclear Chicken Gulps caught seaweed just about every cast. The rip coming through the lagoon was simply too much for even our biggest sinkers and we could not hold bottom.

The other lads were the smart ones. Greg went for a kip in the back of the car, while Shawry and Nick caught some Z's on the beach (although I'm not sure how in the wind and rain).

The highlight of the morning was a chicken burger for breakfast from the Lagoon Kiosk. The lowlight was the girl behind the counter informing me her boyfriend caught five tailor in the lagoon last night - "this big" she says - with arms about seven meters apart.

It's funny, I started fishing mid June last year and my first trip out was with Simmo Ryan to the Lagoon. We got rained on and caught stuff all that day. My year of fishing really has finished up exactly how it started!

That is OFFICIALLY it until the baby arrives due in less than seven weeks (but what's the odds I convince the mrs to let me go one more time???)

:-)

Headed out at 10 to the back of rotto, caught an array of species, including hammerheads, fox fish, pinkies, and sambos.

This 54pound sambo stood out tho! 

Up at 0630 and took the 2 minute drive down to the boat ramp. Filled up the eskies from the free ice machine. After Claire finding out the hard way the ramp was slippery, we headed off.  Gentle eastly blowing as we headed out under the the wharf.  We first headed over to the west side of Connexion Island, and had a hunt around for some ground.  Sounder was starting to light up.

The current is pretty strong around the islands, but we opted to try a few drifts over this flare up on the sounder. First drop we both hooked up to what i think are some kind of sea perch (anyone knows tell me cheers)

We drifted over this mark three times, and each time Claire and i both hooked up..very fishy!

We then headed off as we didnt want to rape that spot, and headed over to the east side of Connexion Island. We have been told by the locals, if you cant catch a Tricky snapper (blue lined emperor) in the channel, you might as well give up fishing. Well they were not wrong, they are in plague proportions in there. There was alot of small ones arond 30cm, and we kept a few around the 40cm mark for tea.

There was plenty of birds working, so we decided to throw the lures out for a bit of a troll around. We didnt have much luck there so i decided do some popping over the shallow reefs around the island. Had a few chases but no hookups. I saw a Barracuda around 150cm chase my popper to the boat, i near on shit myself when i saw it. I was also wondering how long it would take to spool me.

It was near on lunch time and the Heat was kicking in, and we decided we had a great day and headed home. We learnt on our first trip out, that coral is bloody sharp, and shite did we lose some rigs.

Well, this year saw the crowds swell for the Fishwrecked Invitational, 65 competitors from Kununurra to Bunbury joined us in Exmouth for a weekend of fishing and frevolity.  With 21 teams registered for the comp and many stories floating around the place of the trip up, some include, wheel bearings, running out of fuel, nearly being side swiped and feral backpackers things were going to get interesting!  Other notables include a rather large vessel in the fleet (the bling king) being towed in after getting mono prop wrapped in nasty conditions, one competitor having his boat key stolen and tackle bag, one team getting gastro on the best day weather wise we were going to have for quite some time and to top it off another team somehow managing to avoid D/D after drinking makers mark for the last few km's into town.

Unfortunately the comp got some pretty bad weather over the weekend, with the saturday effectively being blown out with 25 knot easterlies (a couple of crazies did get out there and into a few fish though)  The Sunday was forecast as much better and most of the fleet got amongst it (even though it wasn't special out there) and most of the prize categories were claimed, below are the winners:

FW Opening night - Till ($100)

Red Emperor - Ewan (61.5cm) $750 custom baitboard from Commodore Marine

Longest Spanish/Wahoo - Steve/Freofish4 (147cm) $150

Longest Spangled - Adam (70cm) Car Cooler/Warmer unit thanks to Just Dhu It

Longest Coral Trout - Unclaimed (Random prize draw winner - Rob/Deckie)

Longest Trevally - Dave/Gully (97cm) 10 Weezel Poppers thanks to Andos (3 handed out to crowd)

Longest Rankin - Dave/Gully (76cm) - As Dave donated the prize he gave it to second place - Potato cod print (Simo - 65cm)

Longest L/B - Kal ($100) 2.5m Shark

Longest Marlin - Brad (Team Mako) Custom Game Rod thanks to Mako Magic/Tackle Shack

Longest Queenfish - Unclaimed ($100) (Random prize draw winner - SamC (Cough cough - theres a story there!!)

U/16 Longest - Kye (Paul G) - 125cm Spaniard ($50)

Most Marlin/Sails - Brad ($250) - Bad luck C-Wirthy, always next year.

Catch Card lucky dip - Mako Magic ($100 bluewater voucher) Thanks to fisheries research

Best Overall Photo - Kal and his condom....($100)

Best Bling Award - Mako Magic (thanks to Decella)

Well, even with the weather not being special it was awesome to catch up with everyone again and boy did I have a SERIOUS hangover yesterday.  I'd like to thank everyone that managed to make the effort to come up and get out there amongst it.  I have a few ideas on how to continue the comps growth and will be making it a 2 day comp with an extra 1 day optional depending on the weather.  I will also be deciding when it will be held next year as even though we did have it as a vote last year, I don't believe the new moon with big spring tides to be the best for either bottom fishing or game fishing - but never the less I had a bloody good time (even if being flogged out there) and hopefully next year will be bigger, better and with some good conditions to go with!

Here's a couple of pics as a teaser, I will post more up soon.

Cheers,

Adam

Did anyone get any in the last night or two? We went last night and got a whopping 5 prawns!  There were more seen, but out of reach, also we didnt get out till about 6:30 and it looked like you could walk from one side of the river to the other with all the boats with their prawn lights.  Anyway at the end of the night with the prawn action not super hot most boats had left we had seen couple of crabs on the surface.  I went for a quick freedive a nd it was hard work with the current.  We were in 5 mts and I would pull myself down the anchor rope swim a bit further, get a good breath and head for the bottom.  Once down it was a hell of a rush moving with the current but there were quite a few crabs.  I would cover the 20 mts back to the front of the boat in a breath but it was cool on the bottom picking off the biggest crab that challenged me.  3 pretty good crabs in 5 dives and I was back into the boat and we were on our way home in magic glass conditions.

Had the crabs, prawns and remaining squid from sunday for dinner late last night. Delicious.