Great day weather was good ,met Matthew (Mako Magic) and jody. Fish caught.
6 x dhuies 3 released
6 x breaksea, 3 released
1 x snapper released
1 x sambo released
3 x sargent baker
1 x blue spot flathead

Well im back in Perth unfortunatly :(

Just days before leaving to go to Karratha i knew i would be having some crappy luck when i seen the weather and noticed a cyclone brewing off the coast.

All i cared about was getting there before they delayed the flights.
Finally the day before i flew out it was confirmed, my plane will be flying :D

Took off 6.00am took a few pics while on the plane :lol: and watch a bit of inflight tv and before i knew it we landed in Karratha at 7.45am, bloody quick flight!

Leaving Perth

Arriving in Karratha

My mates g/f was there at the airport to pick me up and went back to there house to help pack up for cyclone. It started to look like it was going to be cat 4 direct hit at one stage.

Spent the whole first day packing up the house. Next day, my mate Kristian arrived in Karratha and spent that whole day sitting around because weather was terrible.

3rd day luckily the cyclone went around Karratha but weather was way to windy to fish :twisted:

4th day finally! we went to a spot not far away to get some live mullet and we did very well. Ended up getting 25 perfect little mullet and even a queeny in the net lol!

I quickly chucked one out and within 5 mins there was a big tail wash right where i had cast my bait. After a brief hookup it spat the hook :evil:
We also took the tinny around the creeks trying our luck.
I ended up catching 1 catfish and a cod. My mate Kristian got 2 mangrove jack that he released.

Next day we took the tinny out around the burrup and that water was starting to clear up and look blue again :D

We trolled 3 lures around some really fishy looking area for 3 hours with not 1 hookup :cry:

Next day we teed up with a local bloke to take him wicked boat out 80mile to a gas platform.

More to come soon...

I went out with Ray the Trumpeter King on Sunday. Once again he gave me a lesson on catching Trumpeter.

We also got a few squid.

C'mon

Trumpeter King strikes again

Flipper

The Trumpeter King 

nice feed

Squid rings

hey guy's...juz wondering how did u guys go??/at the swan fish/....any good fish??i caught about 5 tailor's and two bream....anyone caught a decent fish?

Hey y'all!  Well, I figure I may as well let you guys know about my misadventures in learning about saltwater fishing, maybe it will help some other new fish someday! ;)

 Was supposed to go to Coral Bay last week but our friend Nicholas derailed that plan, so we went down to Busselton instead.  It was me, the wife, the in-laws(from the states), and a mate and his wife from here in Perth.  We had my mate's boat with us and hoped to get into some good fish, though we had to put in some fam time and knew we wouldn't be able to fish the whole time.

 Wed. we went out in the morning for some trolling around the cape, but it was blowing and we were really getting bounced...no joy, so we headed back towards Bton, stopping at a likely looking spot in about 20m of water to bounce the bottom.  We caught too many fox wrasse, a few 'cod-like' fish that I couldn't identify, and I had a nice fight with a 2kg skippy on light tackle.  We took the skippy home for tea and returned the rest.

Later that day and Thursday continued the close in fishing with family that didn't want to get out in the chop, looked for salmon from dunno to the cape but saw nothing.  All three days we were on the bay we had an easterly blowing us around.

 Here's where I reveal my inexperience....we wasted three days bouncing around in the cape.....and friday was gonna be our last day there.  Friday we get up and decide to take a ride out to Canal Rocks for some rock-hopping and snorkeling.  After climbing around for awhile, we decided to hike up to an overlook and check out the coast....WOW!  As soon as we got up there, we couldn't believe two things:

1. The seas were flat as a tack...

2. and there were bait balls EVERYWHERE!  from just south of Canal Rocks up to south of Sugarloaf we counted 10-12 baitballs in the course of just a few minutes, from within 100m of shore to as far out as we could see.

My mate and I made our apologies and pushed everyone into the van so we could race back to Bton for the ute and the boat!  took us almost an hour to get back, fuel up and get the boat in the water.  We had two med/heavy baitcasting rigs for trolling and two med. spin rods for casting.  Within a few hundred meters north of the boat ramp we saw a small school of what we think were salmon working some baitfish.  We stopped off for a few casts but the school had already moved on by the time we got there.  We were keen to get out into some tuna/mackeral so we headed out.

As we got out into 20+m of water off Smith's beach we started seeing huge schools of bait on the fish finder just under the surface, along with continuing to see baitballs around us.  None of these lasted for more than a few minutes....is that typical for them to last such a short time?  We saw a pod of dolphins working a school, which was pretty cool.  Saw some fish that looked like mackeral leaping out of the water within half a kilometer from us at one point, don't know if they were feeding or getting fed on....

We ran out our two trolling rigs, one with a red-head Halco LP at 3m depth, the other with a met. blue Halco Crazy Deep.  With in 15 minutes we were hooked up in about 25m of water.  Enjoyed a decent fight from a small mackeral.  He measured 35cm and we thought he was a shark mack so we bled/iced him.  I'm now pretty sure that we got that one wrong.  This fish was blue, not greenish and had horizontal stripes, not dots.  When I fileted him later, his flesh was very dark, but when we fried him it was a nice flaky white....tasted beautiful.  Any ideas on the id? it was defnitely a mack head(sharp nosed with plenty of teeth), blue body with horizontal striping.  definitely need to get a pocket id book until i figure out more about what's what!

So we're super-stoked and ready for the best afternoon fishing of our lives.  Then somebody flipped the switch, all the bait balls disappeared, we couldn't coax a thing, on the fish finder all the schools of baitfish had moved to the bottom.  We continued trolling for awhile...nothing.  We went north to see if the fish had moved....nothing.  We tried bouncing jigs around some good marks on the finder....nothing.  switched to cut bait...nothing.

Overall, we had a blast last week, but can't help but think that we might have missed out on some great fishing while we goofed around in the bay!  lesson learned.....know I've got a lot more to learn! 

Had an hour or so up my sleeve this morning and the wind hadn't started blowing too hard yet so I went down to Kwinny beach with some soft plastics and a small rod.

The tide was pretty low and the water was fairly clear. I walked a hundred metres or so, casting and retrieving a small squidgy wriggler on a light jig head, nothing seemed to be happening where I was casting, but there were mullet out a bit further jumping and carrying on.

I had something bite of the tail off my first wriggler, probably a blowie. I put a fresh one on the jig head, and started making my way back casting and retrieving. I was doing it a little faster this time, as the wind was starting to pick up and the water was starting to lose its clarity due to the surface chop.

Felt a little strike, probably a blowie I was thinking. Reeled it in and it was a baby lizard. Better than a blowie I guess but bloody small! Took photo, then released.

On the way back got another strike, but he threw the hook right at my feet. Was about the same size as the first, so no worries.

Looked out at the mullet, made 'note to self' I should have brought bait and more tackle. Went home.

Was a bit blowy on Sunday evening so went down to Long Point for a bit of sheltered fishing. A few chopper tailor around still, although not as many as we have encountered previously, and nothing legal size either, with our biggest being 28cm.

I was amusing myself trying to hook pickers on the small rod (herring and trumpeter) while soaking a fillet of herring on the beach rod.

After a while I looked up to see the rod tip bouncing. It wasn't bent over that much, just bouncing a little. I started to reel it in and there didn't seem to be much of a fight, just the occasional tail flick and mostly dead weight.

As I got it close to shore I saw an eye reflecting the light from my LED headlight (just bought one the other day, how good are they?).

A shark? A ray?

A bit of both.

Shortly after, my mate accidentally jagged a small tailor, I have no idea how this came about.

Obviously it was a goner, we throw all undersize tailor back all the time, but because this one was not going to make it due to the holes in its guts, Brendan put it out on his big rod.

It was out ther for half an hour or so, and then as he was having something to eat the big rod bends over and the drag starts cranking. Any attempt to get line back was answered with a screaming run. We watched his full reel of 30lb line get fed into the ocean, and just as the spool started to show, the line went slack. So he lost a set of gangs to what I'm guessing was a big ray. We have landed rays before on the big rods loaded with 30lb, so this one must have been a monster.

Went squiding in the sound today with Gaymond Gason(the Trumpeter King)

I got 6 squid, Ray got 2 squid and cut one up to catch his favourite fish the trumpeter. Well done Ray

Nice shallow water Spango on 5kg

Coronation Trout couldn't help themselves

Fun size GT trolling the back of the reef

Did something very very different for valentines day last night :wink:

A girl i know (Sarah) accually begged me to take her fishing because she has never been in her life or even seen a fish been caught.

So the weeks before i arranged a custom made ugly stick off the one and only "Jim Head" to be built in black with pink binding around the eyes.

I then wanted a little message written on the rod for her to finish it off.

Her name is Sarah but people call her " Bear" for short so i had
"miss Bear happy V day 08" put on it and Jim did me a good deal with reel $80! What a legend!

I also got her a bottle of her favouite champaine , red rose and a card and i was set now to be a smooth operator :lol:

Picked her up at 8pm and headed to palm beach jetty because i knew there that she would be able to land her fish fish even though it may not be anything great.

First cast she got a trumpeter, second cast some milk fish thing , then gobble guts etc rest of the night.

All in all she was having a absolute blast and even by 12am she wanted to stay and keep fishing.

All in all she said that my gifts to her and doing something totally different and stress free was really great but she is spewn im headin off for 8 days now haha.

Oh yeah and i nearly betterd my PB starfish :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
What is it with me and these stupid starfish :lol:

I also had out some whole scailies . Got 1 wicked run! Got talkin to a local who told me that there were snapper caught recently!

Here are some pics...

Headed out to the FADs this morning, even though it was starting to pick up. I was taking a calculated risk hoping that Seabreeze got at least the wind direction right. Was helped out by the NE winds, so the ride wasn't too bad.

Went to check the spot where I saw the YFT a couple of weeks back, but there was nothing there. On reaching reaching the co ords for the HYC FAD, I could not see it. Drifted awhile to try to locate it visually, but no joy, so I decided to head to Furuno to see if it was there. I figured that if the FADs weren't there, I would head out to the Derwent.

About 5 minutes into the trip to Furuno, I saw the HYC Fad about 500m to starboard, so I headed over. By now the winds and swells had picked up and it didn't look like there was anything in the water. I sounded awhile in the general vicinity and kept throwing cubes of mules over, but nothing appeared, but I learnt something from Andy last week - even if there is nothing on the sounder, you can still catch fish!

I decided to drift a whole squid back and 5 min later, line started to peel off my reel. What happened next really took me by surprise! I fought the fish back to the boat and when I got colour, to was clear that it was a decent bluefin, BUT it was NOT hooked! The braid was tangled round the lower jaw! I managed to gaff it and then I realised that there was another fish at the end of the line! Turns out it was another blue of the same size, this one was hooked in the mouth (fish was released in the water using a dehooking tool). I suspect that when the first one hit the bait the rest went into a frency and in the twist and turns, one got tangled in the line. Never caught a fish like that before!

Did 6 drifts, hooking up each time, all blues and of the same size. I released all except for the one I gaffed. That one I bled and put on ice. The family already had some sashimi and BBQ tuna kama.

What I was really itching for though was mahi, so I went to look for Furuno, but after reaching the co ords and searching the vicinity, it was not to be found. The wind and swells picked even more, so I decided to head in. The wind changed direction, but it only went W with sometimes with abit of N in it, instead of my preferd (and the earlier forcasted, by seabreeze) SW.

All in all I got beat up abit by the seas, but it was a decent trip.

When I reached OR, I was the last boat out of the water! The carpark was empty and that also meant that I didn't have to rush to flush the motor. Infact I decided to clean the whole boat and all my gear there!

how is everyone

i just came back off the mills charter and it was a great day, first drop was a little quiet untill my mate hooked up with a mako shark which came in around 5 foot and around 40kg bloody great site of it jumping around. then there where a few good snapper and blue bone. then my old man caught this massive amberjack that wieghed 23kg. i have photos that i will post later

If you get a call at 4.30am from Andy Mac, be weary.

He said "I couldn't sleep so I went outside and pulled my finger out of my mouth and held it up into the air and I am pretty sure that the wind that is now blowing 16-20 will drop by 9am and with the 1m swell, it will be a great day on the water - pack you gear and head over pronto! I have been looking out at the water every morning and I can see the Spaniards hitting the bait on the surface - let's go get a few and after that I will bring you out to the "Dropzone"!

Still half asleep, I gather my stuff and load it in the car, make my way over, to find Andy having a coffee by the boat. I am given instructions to load the boat, cooler, ice, gear , bait and what not. Then I am told that his jock wheel is not working and we have to jack the trailer up with the car jack. With that done, we head off to fill gas and when it comes to paying, he "has to do something on the boat"!

We pull up into the rigging area at Mindarie and he subtly mentions that the parking machine is over that way...........

We head out with a spread of lures and troll the back of Staggies several times and "zilch O". We head out wide to several spots - nothing, then he said get ready we are heading out to the "Dropzone". The only things we dropped there were rigs - lots of them!

Another thing - the fish attractant that he asked me to use looked suspiciously like sunblock and he didn't seem to use any himself.

We spend several hours on the water, getting wet and banged around so much that I was wondering if Andy and a chiropractor had agreed on a cut for introductions. I am also beginning to wonder which end of his anatomy he pulled his finger out of in the first place when he did the weather check!

Not only that, when we get back, I am given the bucket, brush and rag and end up cleaning the boat.

How about that!


Well all was not lost, we did get one decent fish and of course with the Dhuie Master on the water after a 4 month break, he would be the one to catch it.

:P

Thanks Andy Had a good day and it was nice wetting a line with you!

Keep checking the weather, next flat day, we will go to the FADs - my boat this time!

Hey everyone, was going to go down south to a spot I found last year for a Salmon hunt. Just wondering if anybody has heard of fish schools going by close to shore(LB'sd) near Dunno yet?

P.O. Box 350 Kalbarri W.A. 6536

Only three boats competed, probably due to the less than perfect weather, but all caught game fish. Jamie Waite and Steve Wiseman were out early the first day aboard “Alliance” recording strikes north of the river out in about 30m of water, while Laurie Malton with kids, Rebecca and Jared aboard “Mzilikazi Roller” tried in closer to shore missing out on the action “Alliance” was experiencing and keeping quiet about. Jamie Grieves, son Jack, Stan Sutherland, Brad Jols aboard “Leg” were further north keeping radio silence.

Laurie’s 5.9kg tuna on 3kg line

Stan Sutherland’s great catch on 2kg line

Rebecca shows her 6kg tuna on 3kg line.

The biggest bream for the year for Steven Eley.

Junior winner Jared Malton, Rebecca’s 2 macs that gained her the overall Ultralight Champion.

Jamie Waite’s 4kg line class winning mac and Steve Wiseman holds his 5.6kg on 4kg line fish

Gary's Bream

Daniel holds up his biggest for the year mulloway, a 19.1kg specimen

ive just purchased the latest mag .man oh man have a go at the size of the dog tooth tuna .what a bloody BEAST ,i just had to buy it .also massive tigers caught on 15 kg .
i usually woul;dnt rant about this sort of thing .but they are MASSIVE
i know what ill be doing for the next hour or 2 reading about it

G'day guys and girls

Has anyone heard any reports of snapper being caught since cockburn and warnbro sound were re-opened  on 1 Feb. I am thinking of going out for a fish tomorrow.

Cheers

 Dewy

Got up at 7.30am and headed down to Rockingham . I go to start fishing and i see a nice size cobbler!

It swam into a clump of sea grass where is hid. I then dropped my bait infront of it and BANG! it came out and chomped it!

I got it in for a few pics then released it. Came close to getting spiked aswell :lol:

I took a girl i know and a mate and yep you guessed it! Ladies luck! 1st cast she get a very nice YF whiting!!!! For the next hour we were getting herring , small flounder and about 5 just legal KG whiting that were all released.

tryed another spot closeby got a really nice silver bream and a few wrass!

In total i took home 2 nice yellow fin whiting, 5 herring and a silver bream.

Very nice day out! Bit burnt and tired now :lol:

Was at hillaries last night. saw a guy using a roosta popper but it got busted off by something. dont know what it was but it wouldve been a keeper!. I started off using a river2sea 25gm searock that i picked up from bcf for $2 and then soon changed to a 14gm river2sea searock (again for $2). ended up downsizing the trebles and had a few hits, one average hookup but no fish. We moved to just in front off the lighthouse facing north. after a while the tailor picked up. caught a baby tailor and then a bigger one spat the hook on me. i soon picked up another and dad got a double hookup of baby tailor on his alvey. the guys next to us got into the same baby tailor and one of the guys pulled up a crayfish tangled in his line. i had a goooood hookup to an average tailor but it spat the hook. just as we were about to pack up, the same guy who caught the cray pulled up a occy that looked about a kilo. overall it was a good night with just enough wind.

Went down to Long Point on Thursday arvo to try for some tailor, we had been catching heaps of choppers there recently, and a few guys from Fishwrecked have been reporting some varied (some good, some average) tailor runs as well.

While the sun was still high in the sky we were bottom fishing with pieces of squid and getting butteries, herring, trumpeter and the like. Just before we were about to switch to baitcasting mulies, I reeled in this ugly little thing, which is obviously a blowfish, I'm guessing a baby Nor West blowie...

Tailor did come on the bite, and it was chopper after chopper of about 25cm. Ended up with 1 keeper of 38.5cm. Where are all the big uns?

Met up with Danny wednesday night and the scalies were going nuts DOWN E-SHED!
We stocked up on some nice big fish baits........

Went down to Mandurah (Peel)on Wednesday and crabbed for 3 hours on my boat with a gentlemans hours crab session being the go and Deefa in company. With waiting a while between runs as the coldies were going down well we racked up our 20 blues and good sizes for there. Started off a bit quiet initially but picked up as the wind dropped and moving around also helped.

Cooked them up on the bbq that night, tasted good but lean meat in the claws compared to Coastline or Swan crabs but a break up for me as i like to crab in different areas!

Was a good day!

Took Scottnofish out on sunday, with the forecast not looking the best i decided to hit the 30m line just the other side of the bank from rockingham and troll north and up towards the top end of garden island, about 20min after just to my left i saw a heap of birds working so went that way.
Once we got near them you could see them smashing and could see big schools of them on the sounder as well, within mins my line took off first and aboard came a nice little southern bluefin, boated it and hit the school again, same thing happened.
Neil was using a different type of lure and struggled to get the fish, it was 9 to me and 1 to him at one stage, then i told him to put the other lure i had which was the same as mine, then bang, he started to get them, we had the fish on for around an hour and a bit, plenty of double hook ups, all in all we had a great session, keeping our 4 and relasing atleast another 20, which is pretty good going as normally they wouldnt hang around that long, even caught 1 on my 6lb loomis bream rod and my 1000 twin power, hopefully neil can put a couple of pics up

Hey Guys,

Got back from Coral Bay the other day and haven't got around to putting up a report, so here it is.

Left perth late moring on the friday and arrived late arvo at the murchison river, we stayed the night  and then proceeded to coral bay on saturday. We arrived late afternoon again and set up camp at the Bayview caravan park.

Sunday morning we sussed out some places to fish and to not fish(turtle season) from the locals. We decided to head north of own to spot known as the Sandbar. Fishing of the sandbar itself saw plenty of dart and some follows by some goldens. My dad and i were the only ones using lures, casting little 15-30gram twisties, and these outfished bait by a mile and claiming the biggest for the day.

While everyone was content catching dart, i spotted a nice reefy looking point about 1.5-2km up the beach. Off i went in search of something more powerful. Halfway up i decided to have a litlle flick and first cast was followed buy a massive longtom, no hookup. Second cast followed buy a largish  dart, so i stopped the lure dead and it hit it and took off, after a short little fight i had him on the beach only to realise that i had left the camera back with everyone else. So off he went back in the water while i went back to get the camera.
 
I finally made it to the point and started casting. About ten minutes in i had a solid hookup which took a far bit of line as it swam up the beach, after a few tense moments i had a nice golden on the beach of about 2.5kg. Unfortunatley for me and the fish, it didn't swim off when i tried to release it. I spent a good five to ten minutes trying to revive it to no avail. So i had to carry it 2km back to were everyone else was, we had it for tea later that day.

The next day we headed back to the Sandbar for some more action. I landed some more dart as well a little queenie and also dropped a few others. I decided i would trek it up to the point again, but this time i wasn't alone. I had my little cousins follow me (they wanted to catch a golden as well), so instead of doing some serious fishin, the next few hours were taken up with trying to untangle, unsnag their gear and aslo donating 5 or so of my lures to them (GRRRR!). i did manage to fish for a bit and i ended up with another golden this time alot smaller.

The next day was a scorcher (most days were!) so we decided to spend most of the day down the beach snorkelling and playing beach cricket.

Wednesday was very hot again so we done some more snorkelling and waited for it too cool down in the late afternoon and then head out for a fish. This time we headed south to a likely looking stretch and set up there. I flicked lures around until the sun went down and then i set up a bait rod (first time i touched bait for the trip). It was a quiet night  apart from a double hookup, one which burried my dad, and the other turned out to be a little GT. We also had the usual dart etc.

Thursday was another hot one  and we didn't get out till the afternoon, we did a bit of 4wding and got lost. we found our way back and went to pick up the gear and then head down to the boat ramp. It was another quiet night for us but the people up from us landed a couple of decent spanglies.

The next day we packed up and headed for home. So all in all wasn't a very special trip but it broke a few firsts for me and its always nice to head north. I didn't do as much fishing as i would have like but that they way it is.

Thanks for reading guys, it was a long one.

I'll post some pics when i figure out how.

Cheers.

Can't win them all ,weather was no good. Headed out from Two Rocks, breeze was in before we left ,and the water was very lump. Hooked up to one good fish and dropped it ,Jesse's freind was seasick real bad so we bit the bullet and headed home, maybe next time SUCH IS LIFE 

Well here is the report from my lastest jaunt up to sunny Exmouth. Photos are all up in my gallery

Didnt fish a whole lot as diving was more on the adgenda. Besides didnt need to as the 2 times we went out we got some excellent fish including - reds, rankins, spangled emperor, jobfish ... You get the idea. The highlight for me was probably my biggest red I have ever caught which went 80cm so I had a pretty big smile on my dial after that one to say the least. Surface activity was very quiet which was a bit surprising but there were a few dollies around but decided to be pretty fussy when I started throwing soft plastics at them. They would just tail it and sniff it without actually striking.

The weather couldnt have been better with just about 5kts of wind max for the entire trip. Diving was great with the highlight there diving with 3 big potato cods which were intent on following us round and playing for the dive. Was unreal.

A HUGE thanks must go out to Adam for letting us use his house while he was down here, so cheers again mate - we owe you one. Will make it up by taking you out in April when we get back there.

Gully

Went down to the Ammo jetty this afternoon, it was blowing a gale. Saw a few scallies and gardies caught. Didnt hang around long because of the wind.

Went to the Eshed to get out of the wind, got a small flathead first cast. Then the blowies moved in, there was millions of them. didnt see anything other than blowies being caught.

Has anyone been getting any scallies or yellowtail at the Eshed? I left before it got dark, dunno if the blowies piss off after dark.

was down at hillarys yesterday night 6-11:30.verrrrry windy so we were lucky to snatch a spot from someone who just left. caught a rock cod early on and later probly about 930ish dad caught a 32.5 cm tailor. some guy told us that there were tailor being caught down in thte corner near the beach and that hed caught his bag limit of tailor within 30 minutes at two rocks

gidday all went out for a look on xmas day bit breezy first up but flattened off nicely and got bloody hot lol spent most of the day in the 40 mtr markwe maqnaged to pick up 3 nice 52cm kg,s,3 meaty black arse,3sambo4 huge sweep, 2foxfish a queenie and a baldy but no pinkies or dhuies most enjoyable day out there cheers craig

How did everyone go? Manage to cook your fish on the front of your boat? What a joke, it was so damn hot.

We headed out about 730 from freo in search of deeper water. You could already tell it was going to be a stinker. After a nice long drive we got to the sambo patch and saw about 10 boats on it so moved out to the derwent. Drift was unusual so it took us a few goes but we managed to boat a few pinkies, a big queen snapper and even a ~15kg amberjack(which was taken on a jig !). Amber was the highlight of the day.

After our arms were sore we headed back in for some jigging. It was chaos out there, about 15 boats on the one spot. Tangles everywhere. We managed to land a few, and loose a few to sharks before we decided to try a diff spot as its was worse that a xmas shopping centre carpark there.  Next spot jigged up a few fish between us too. Then headed back in.

Howd everyone else go?