Just an update on Hannah and my trip to Ningaloo , in billabong very bloody sad to be heading home but thought I'd post a few pics. Did a lot of deep dropping as sharks in closer were just taking almost every good fish hooked .

anyway here's some pics of what we picked up

 Chasing sandies out from Golden Bay today outside the reef and noticed several schools of salmon, didn't have a lure. Expect to see a few boats out that way on the week end. 

Good luck.

As I write this, I am travelling back from my second trip to Papua New Guinea fishing aboard K20. Truth be told, I had not really planned on going back there so soon after my December trip – but I had some spare time and an opportunity came up to get a last minute spot to explore the Port Lock reef system as well as revisit Eastern Fields, so it seemed it was meant to be.

This trip report will not be my normal day by day recounting of fish caught, or a description of the fishery and operation which you get access to when you book one of these trips (all of that is covered in my December report for anyone keen to learn more). Unfortunate though it may be, this report is, like many fishing stories, more about the ones that got away than those that hit the decks.

I have spent the last week contemplating how we judge what is or is not a ‘successful’ fishing trip. I think for me having a few trips under my belt now – it comes down to achieving targets you set out to achieve before the trip – rather than just to put a hook into as many fish as possible (unless of course that is the target you set out to achieve!).

For me, Papua New Guinea has always been about two things. I’ve had big doggies before – but I’ve never yet had a true monster class fish. I want one – just one – but catching one of those most frustrating of demon fish is at the top of my list of fishing ambitions. The second objective was to land a Napoleon Wrasse on surface lure.

On the second of those points I’ll spare you the suspense. One of the lads on the trip named Alvin landed two Napoleons on this trip – both on popper, and the second being a beautiful big 20-25kg bright green specimen. Anthony jigged a smaller one, being his second to date. Not even remotely jealous….. I’m still yet to see one in the flesh – and yes, many ‘consolation beers’ were drunk on the night of Alvin’s second.

Generally speaking the fishing was pretty tough. The fish were there – they were following lures – but they really didn’t want to commit. The overall number of fish was reduced further by the fact that unlike the first trip where I fished quite a bit of light tackle also – this trip was nothing but the heavy kit on casting.

To make a long story short, we averaged around 10 dogs and the same in GTs a day – plus the usual bycatch of dinosaur coral trout, jobbies, red bass etc. GTs and dogs to around the 30kg mark were landed amongst the group. Some nice size, but nothing earth shattering landed.

But the point of this story is really about my first target. The big dogs. We’d hooked some pretty big fish on the first trip to Eastern Fields, but I wasn’t really certain that we’d found the beasts that I sought and we certainly hadn’t landed anything over 35kg. This was all about to change on the second day of this trip.

There’s a small atoll that sits a distance from the main Eastern Fields reef system. In the afternoon of the second day two of the tenders (including mine) went out to look and see what we could find on some marks that produced on the last trip. First drop and I had a nice little warmup doggie on the decks. It was a decent fish, but after seeing the other lads get sharked I was fishing sunset drag on PE8 on my Saltiga LD35 with heavy spool thumbing and made sure the fish didn’t get a turn of line off me so I could get him in for a pic and release as quick as possible.

Then I dropped again…. I was using one of the Jigging Master Fallings 260gr jigs that to date has hooked me more dogs than anything else. In hindsight, I probably should have kissed it goodbye or at least wished it luck as I dropped it to meet its fate. Before my line colour showed that I’d let out the appropriate amount of string to get me to the bottom, it stopped peeling off the spool. Hit on the drop. Righto then – set the hooks, and the massive BKK Deep single in 13/0 struck home. There it was – that telltale pause where the dog sits there still and shakes his head, realises his predicament – and then that run. That incredible first run, that really is what doggie fishing is all about (other than disappointment, which I’ve learnt is a huge part of this sport!). And then he was off – but this was different. It wasn’t the usual 50m dash at incredible speed and then the relentless pressure gets the better of him and you turn his head – this was a different ballgame. I knew in the first seconds that this was it – the one I’d travelled to the other side of the world to get my shot at. He didn’t stop after 50m. He didn’t stop after 100m. In fact, he didn’t stop at all. Every kilo of drag that my LD35 could put out was being used, as was so much thumb pressure that I burnt two gloves and my thumbs beneath them – and just as I saw the last few wraps of line on my spool about to disappear I pushed down with one last bit of strength and managed to pop the PE8 mainline. It was a truly humbling experience. After winding in what remained of my slack line, I sat down and contemplated the biggest ass kicking I’d ever been handed by a fish.

But there’d be time to have nightmares about that moment later. The tide had changed, and the fish were on the chew.

We kept jigging that spot for a while and no result. So it was time to move to another mark near a small reef outcrop. First drop and I couldn’t believe it. The exact same sequence of events that had taken me years of attending such trips to experience – occurred again. Gargantuan dog strike – blistering run – burnt fingers – except this time something was different. My freshly serviced Saltiga decided it didn’t have what it took to stand up to this punishment. As the drag completely failed mid-run and my line disappeared into the sunset, I realised that I had brought a feather duster to a gunfight.

Now I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just sit back in the midst of the greatest big doggie bite I’d ever witnessed. But on the other hand, my heavy jigging combo was completely out of action. So what else to do but cast?

I grabbed the heaviest casting combo I had with me. Carpenter Monster Hunter 80H, Stella 18k, PE10 Jerry Brown solid braid. Strapped on the heaviest stickbait I had with me (FCL Labo HJ200 rigged with the enormous BKK Lone Diablo 13/0 inline singles) and had a cast. These FCL sticks were fast sinkers and as I knew the dogs were striking my jigs about 30m under the boat I cast out a medium length cast and counted down 45 seconds or so before beginning a long sweeping retrieve. You can imagine my surprise when after about 4 sweeps of the lure I came tight! After some frenzied hook setting I managed to get the rod butt into the gimbal and felt the rod load up – but it wasn’t the blistering run I had hoped for. Nope – it was that heavy plodding feeling that can only come from a filthy whaler of some description having grabbed your lure. Sharks were an ever present issue on this trip – much moreso than in December – but we found that whenever the sharks were in big numbers, the dogs were there also. So you just had to persist.

Thankfully the prick of a shark bit me off pretty quickly and I was able to tie on my last HJ200 and try again. First cast, 4 or 5 sweeps, on again! But another f#cking shark! This one was smaller and had bitten only on the lure so I was able to haul him up in short order, tell him what I thought of him, and throw my now battle scarred lure back for another attempt.

But what happened next is one of those fishing moments that will stay with me until the end of my days. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of sharks just sub-surface so I decided to count down about 90 seconds with my stickbait and then work it up more quickly than I had before. First drop – no result. Second drop, and I felt something swipe at my lure but not connect, kept working it flat out and then bang, fish on, and this was no filthy whaler. I set the hooks and felt the pause, headshakes, and then the run. The run I’ll never forget.

It’s one thing to hook a big dog on jigging gear. It’s another thing entirely on an 8 foot rod. I knew already from my consecutive ass kickings that these fish were no joke so I had set the drag almost to max before casting (the second shark didn’t manage to take a single click of line). But as soon as I managed to get the rod butt into the deep socket on the MC Works Gimbal I screwed down that last half turn of drag on the Stella 18k and leaned back as hard as I could. The big Stellas can pump out a hell of a lot of drag, and I’m not the biggest guy getting around. To be honest if it hadn’t been for Stephen seeing my predicament and running over to grab the back of my belt, I probably would have gone straight overboard. That run seemed to happen both incredibly quickly and incredibly slowly at the same time. I watched the spool rapidly begin to empty and started to use my glove to add even more pressure to the spool. Everything now felt totally on the limit. Hooks, knots, line, reel and most of all, angler! I have never before (even in pics online) seen such a bend in an MH80H which was bent over like a PE5 tuna noodle rod and I just waited for something to pop (with my back being the most likely candidate).

But remarkably everything held. However no matter how much I tried to slow down this demon fish – it just wasn’t enough. By the time this fish had originally grabbed the lure I probably only had 40 or 50m of line out. But now, the supply of PE10 left on the spool was looking dangerously thin. As I saw the shiny spool begin to appear through the line below without even having slowed this thing down let alone stop it, I knew I was stuffed. I lowered the rod angle, grabbed the spool as hard as I could and hoped something would pop before the rod got yanked overboard. Thankfully it did, as the mainline parted and I sat there staring at the water for a few minutes. I didn’t even have that feeling you sometimes get when you lose a fish where you feel the need to yell and scream in frustration. It was more a case of ‘well played mate, well played’. He’d earned his freedom. I’d learnt a lesson.

If you ask me what I landed that day, it doesn’t sound that impressive. Bit of by catch and one small to medium sized dog. But I came back to K2O that night and told people honestly that that day of fishing was one of the three all time best fishing days of my life. It’s the kind of day that reminds me why we spend the cash to travel to these out of the way spots to do battle with these beasts, even though we know that we won’t always win.

As I said this won’t be normal report. I could describe the rest of the days’ fishing, but in truth the writeup would be not dissimilar to the above. Personally I had two more sessions where I hooked multiple of these stupid sized fish that had eluded us on the first trip. These subsequent sessions were in much deeper water (120m+) and our odds of getting them up were even lower, and we just couldn’t land them.

We tried going easier on them. We tried using the heaviest jigging gear we could find (Anth was using PE13!) and towing them away from the pinnacles, but the pricks were just unstoppable. And so the trip came to an end, with us having had at least 20 chances amongst us at fish the size of which dreams are made of – a strike number which I really don’t think you could claim anywhere else in the world. We had blown reels, spooled reels, broken rods, popped mainline of every calibre, bent hooks, opened split rings and totally emptied jig bags. But not one of us landed a dog over 30kg. I guess that’s big doggie fishing, and that’s partly why I love it.

I have another big doggie trip coming up later in the year and I honestly don’t know what to do differently (other than replace my reel!) but I can’t wait to get out there and have another go at landing these demon fish.

More info on all kit used can be found at www.adventureangler.net
 

If you'd like to go and get some big dog action yourself, we are now taking bookings for the 2017 season so please drop me a message to secure prime dates.
 

Casting a decent shark bait directly into a 35km/h SW wind I was extremely suprised to see this cuda hit the beach, especially since my bait must of been 20m out at the most. Rarely keep any fish except for use as bait but unfortunately it bled out quite quickly on the beach so we had a decent supply of fillets and bait for the trip.

Googled some recipes but mainly found warnings of cigutera and that they taste like shit any way. Fuck that, after the amount of effort it was to fillet and pinbone it was dinner for the rest of the trip. Soaked the fillets in milk each day and they tasted great every night was definitely no need for a strong marinade or seasoning.

It was hot, many a beer and bundy by this point....

Only managed to land two sharks the whole trip, was a few unstoppables hooked which came close to dumping a spool of 65lb braid under locked drag before the serves on my wind on leaders would give up.

Blacktip I'm guessing?

And lastly one of my favourite fuckn sharks, as if the going ballistic and thrashing around on the sand wasn't fun enough already this one actually had a proper go at grabbing my hand while removing the hook. Not just a random head shake but a full on attempt at getting my hand and it's mouth connected. 

Cheers

Found some new ground last Saturday and was good to get back on the scoreboard with a couple of nice Dhus after a quiet run for us lately. Also picked up a 11kg sambo while trolling behind the 20m edge off two rocks. Thoughts of a nice metro mack had morale up for a little while before he got to the boat

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 Got out for an arvo/evening bash on the FFB off Mandurah on Friday night. Quiet on the Snapper, lots of little ones. As it got dark we got 2 undersize Dhu. I got snagged and snapped off so decided to tie on one of those larger style bait chaser rigs with the lumo bead at the front. Managed a 52cm Dhu and a nice little Nannygai which was a suprise in only 14m of water. Got snagged again and lost the lot, by this stage I was convinced the lumo beads had been working as the brother in law hadn't caught anything except Pike. So had a ferret around in the tackle box looking for something that glowed and came across a Pirate jig with a Lumo squid assist. Gave that a blast with the head lamp and chucked a strip of mullet on one of the hooks and over the side she goes, not long after got this little fella, he put up a good little tussle in the shallow water

Sorry about the shitty sideways pic.

At the boat show at Hillarys today, gotta say it was small but I love boats so always enjoyable checking out other boats......good, compromised, bad and ugly.

GOOD

28 ft Fury dual console.I don't like bow riders, but man, I could live with this one. A beautifully built boat with some cool features, would need several tweeks to make it useable for me but I could own that boat. $250-300k is the compromise......may need to win lotto......

COMPROMISED

Regulator 23 ft CC. Bloody awesome 24 degree hull, would ride brilliantly in chop, but talk about unstable! I stepped on the gunwhale and it moved over 15 degrees.....two blokes on one side and it was 20 degrees. You would get out to your fishig spot bloody quick in this boat, but then turn around and go home to get a proper fishing boat that did not flop all over the place.....also, where the seat mounts it looked like there were stress cracks in the fibreglass on a new boat....$200k for a 23 ft CC.......pass.

BAD

The plethora of cheap and nasty ali boats with huge reverse chines that would slap like biatch in chop.....price tags suggest they come with a happy ending every night for a year......

UGLY....and worse than BAD

Don't know if this was a joke (I could not stop laughing.....), but this thing (I think it was a boat) was "pop" rivited and glued together and looked to be made of 2 mm galv sheet (I assume it was ali but it was very thin and flimsy....truly scary heading out past the 3 mile in this thing. Is this for real, it looked like a set prop?

The moral of the story....all boats are a compromise, but after seeing a heap of different boats......I am very happy with my Boston Whaler Conquest 235, and would not swap it with anything else....maybe a Fury if I had unlimited coin......

I did a solo launch yesterday (all deckies engaged) and decided to chase some Salmon as they have been around our Metro since before Easter.  The initial target area was the shipping channel in Cockburn Sound where Gail and I had witnessed a large school the weekend before. When I arrived at a position north of Woodman Point I was met by a large school busting up bait fish.  I decided to use the fly rod as I am keen to get one of these feisty fish on fly, but one cast and they all disappeared.  I remained in the area for another hour even going as far as the Ammo Jetty without any success. Well it was going to be Mewstone even though I knew that the water was going to be busy with other keen anglers. 

On arrival at Mewstone I was met by more than 30 boats and although it was busy, there was a sense of “organized chaos”.  The Salmon were definitely on the chew and I often witnessed several boats with anglers hanging on to their rods as the “scaly torpedoes” tried throwing the lures.  One boat even had three anglers hooked up at the same time and I stopped fishing for a while to watch them clamber over each other as their fish swam in various directions.

Gladly most anglers returned their fish back to the water ready to breed and fight another day.

See my experiences in the video below.

https://youtu.be/gHbSvS2XqLE

 Just a quick laugh at my wife Hannah .

Decided yesterday to look for rubies on the 300m mark at ningaloo station, and after half an hour or so thought with the water temp at 28.3 should put out a couple of pushers one black Bart on only 10 kg line and the other a blue soft grassy on the 20 kg . 

20 minutes later the black Bart takes off and I gun the engine , line screams off and Hannah grabs the rod, solid hookup ! 

Fish jumps quickly and I just know we are undergunned massively, Hannah however is and I quote so excited she could wet herself.

I think to myself that attitude is not going to last  if we stay connected.

One hour in she's still excited, fish has jumped a couple more times about a hundred meters from the boat but we are staying close now.Two hours in she is starting to feel the burn in her arms but is staying positive , we only had the crappy travel camera so fish has jumped again and we've got a few photos, (hope can download some to laptop when we get home)I still believe she doesn't realise just what she has hooked because her last black was under a hundred pound.Two and a half hours fish has sounded and Hannah is almost done, but wants to see it jump one more time....

Three hours and Hannah is finished fish comes up jumps 30 m from the boat grey hounding across about 70 m and that's when Hannah realises the blue she has hooked isn't even tired so at the three hour and twenty minute mark she asks me what to do , I take the rod and bust off the line as estimated weight of fish was 250kg and on the gear we had would probably taken 5-7 hrs if at all . Hannah was happy with her ruby though today is suffering from some very sore arms and sunburn !

Was out last weekend having a troll for an elusive metro mack around the back of FFB behind Garden Island when we came by a small salmon school - only had my 3kg flick rod for casting so went well on the light gear.
Thanks to my buddy Dave who skilfully manoeuvred the boat during a few tricky moment during the fight.
Looking like it's going to be another good metro salmon season was surprised we saw fish as the water temp was around 23 deg.

Cheers

Heathy

I spent Easter in South Africa at Shelly Beach watching the guys launch and retrieve their boats.  Really appreciate our boat ramps.

See footage below.

https://youtu.be/tGn2lbfEqVk

Just wondering how the crays are going at the moment. I thought i read there is another "run" of crays around this time of year around April / May is that right? just wondering if its worth putting the pots out of Mindarie or Two Rocks  cheers Dave 

 Hi crew, Ive been a bit busy with work, but  managed a few days on the river last week.

With the rains at Easter, the upper river started to go brown realy quick, this kickstarted the Bream to head towards Perth holding up in deep corners along the way.

For me, the lures have not been working, both plastics and hard bodies. So i resorted to the old bait again and started to land some fish.

Some of the bait i use. Mullet cubes and River Prawns.

When the Bream run at this time of year, you realy need to search out the best snags, drop off's and structure. Snags like this one just can't be over looked.

Get the bait or lure into the edge of the stucture and if you don't get hit, get it into all that mess and hope for the best.

Sometimes you lose and sometimes you win.

Other areas to spend some time can be right in your face, don't be scared to investigate them, even if they are right on someones door step but respect their property.

This spot produced a very nice fish right on dark, but i didn't have the camera on. I asked a fellow fisher to a snap shot and was quite happy with the result.

I was even more happy to see this old beast swim away again, I hope someone else gets the pleasure to hold a ( now becoming rare ) beauty like this. 

Cheers Grant .. 

With all the reports of inshore pinkies being caught lately, it was time to start the 2016 “campaign”.  Past experience is that the fish start to come in close by March/April. 

The weather was really good on Saturday so why not give it a try?  Michael (zOOm) was keen to take his boat so a 5am departure from Hillarys was arranged.  The wind was light but the swell was at 2.5m, which means it is not wise to take on the crossing of the near shore reefs in the dark.  The “plan” was to stay in close, burley up and fish sunrise for the pinkies with good quality rigs and baits.  There was no spot, we just looked at likely reef structure, anchored and set up a burley trail.  Let’s just say we didn’t go more than a few kilometres.

A customer ordered 20kg of burley last week so I made a “special” batch.  Lots of fish, lots of oil and a high proportion of pilchard.  I must admit I had my first “2016 pinkie trip” in mind and It was a high strength fine grained burley that dispersed at about 1 to 1.5kg per hour, enhanced with pilchard shred every now and again.   

Within 20 minutes, Michael’s bottom rig went off.  This fish was a pinkie of about 450mm so back it went, but the signs were good.  About 10 minutes later my bait runner made that sound that you love to hear.  Wait, wait, wait and when the fish clearly had the bait set the hooks.  This was a nice solid fish that was peeling lots of line with the characteristic head shakes.  Very pleased to see the big pink flash as it came into sight.

I have imported the Big Angry Fish Release Clips and will have them available in a few weeks.  We got a small shipment to start with (which I have sent all round Australia) but kept one for me to test.  I also had some small vacuum sealed sand whiting so rig one up and out it goes on my spin outfit.  It didn’t take long for the line to pull from the clip with plenty more line being pulled from the open spool.  When I set the hooks, this was another nice fish but after its first run it turned and swam back towards the boat?  It did “wake up” and after a good fight was in the net too.

The fish were about 5.5kg and 75-80cm.  Not huge but still very solid.  Can’t complain about that bag within the first hour though.

After first light, and after the pinkies, we headed deeper.  Anchor and burley again and the results kept coming.  I got another good pinkie (released) and Michael got a nice baldie.

My bait runner went off again on another solid fish.  This was a good fight and then up popped a very solid baldie.  I had my bag so this was a lucky fish as we treated it with a lot of care, got a photo and released it with a weight.  It came up slow due to its fight and we are fairly positive that it released well.  We estimated it at about 5-6kg (very fat fish) so it was a lot of “quality” going back in the ocean.

We then decided that we didn’t want to risk harming any more fish so packed up and came in.  It was a lovely morning on the water with some quality fish, including a bag out on the target species just as the sun came up. 

Brilliant day on the water on Sunday with TimVB. Greeted with a big swell but no chop so we headed wide and did a few drops in the deep, bagged out early on a mixed bag of yummy ooglies (bloody Tim caught all 4!!!!), so trolled a few FADS and jigged a few barges but not much happening there, then had a quick KG fish on the way in with our new KG outfits we got from the Campbells closing down sale (little baitcaster outfits that are perfect for the sneaky KGs). I managed to at least catch a few of the KGs.....

Cod was well over 20kg.

Launched at woodies before sunrise and headed out between Garden and Carnac hoping for a pinkey, after a couple of hours with nothing to show we headed out a bit further looking for a feed of whiting. We both changed to our 2-4kg outfits and baited the tiny ganged hooks with a whole whitebait. In 20 mtrs we both dropped our baits over the side...straight into a school of salmon passing under the boat. The sons rod was the first to go with the fish going airborn a couple of times before the leader knot parted. Then my rod bent over and it was on. It took about 50mtrs of PE1 on the first run followed by some spectacular jumps, the whole time we were both waiting for the tiny hooks to pull or the thin leader to go. After about 10 very anxious mins we finally got it in the net. What are the odds of dropping straight onto a school after a random stop in 20 mtrs over nothing but sand. With the school gone we headed in before the arvo traffic jam at the ramps. Salmon patties twice in a week....

 Gday all. Damn we were surprised to hear of the 4mtr swell yesterday while we were already underway at 4am. Was an interesting ride in the pitch black at 16knots. By 623am had a dhu and pink onboard. Had me thinking real early demersal bag then move in closer for some different action. Wasn't to be. Bout 1030am and no more keepers headed in due to low fuel. At back of the 5 we stopped at some spot i marked a while ago and the spare 20ltr jerry can would easily get us back to peron. Jim sets anchor, i drop plastic over side and within 5mins the spheros starts singing a wonderful tune. BingoBango in comes a good pink. Bout 20mins later Jim totally changes direction of his cast,due to the burley trail, and again Jims on and landed another nice pink. So all in all a good day.  I didn't get s pick of the whole catch. Just missing Jims 2nd pink which was a tad smaller than my placky pink. Results, me 1xdhu and 1x pink. Jim 2x pinkies. 

Gail and I did an early morning launch from Woodies yesterday in search of Pinkies and Dhuies.  First stop between Garden and Carnac Islands and the first Snapper was on board as the sun was rising.  From there we made our way to Rotto to be spoilt with more Snapper, Dhufish, Shark and other species.  On our way back we managed some bonus fish in the form of Salmon caught between Carnac Island and Woodies right in the shipping channel.  Overall another great day on our wondeful waters.

See YouTube clip below:

https://youtu.be/RV6FTN22N8A

we collected a heavy submerged object on the way to FFB on Wednesday ........flat calm conditions so travelling at 24knots in deep water when we hit a speed bump......bent prop but absolutely no scouring, bent shaft, damaged gear box and huge piece missing from skeg ....assume a submerged piece of timber or turtle

Thank goodness for insurance as damage quoted at almost $9000

 Be aware that you can't always see obstacles .....roughly 4nm @256 from the GI Carnac channel markers 

Went out for a bash today weather was to good not too. Took my latest addition to my quiver, 2015 Saltiga 15h loaded with Ocea PE 3. Had a little jig and bait fish with it. Ended up with a nice breaksea cod and kg whiting, both on bait. Looking forward to tangling with some solid stripey eyes with it. 

Hit the water at 830 from woodies, headed out between GI and Carnac. As the swell was so low I risked anchoring shallow in amongst the reefs and started burlying. All was quiet for the first hour then started getting hits on the PE3 outfit but no hook-ups. Changed to the light gear (Nitro distance spin 2-4kg / Stella FE 3k Pe1) using small gang hooks and white bait. Instant hook up and it had some grunt in 3 metres of water. Soon had a very solid skippy of about 30 cm, they go hard in shallow water and was great fun to catch. Spent the next hour catching and releasing skippy up to 35cm. Best session ive had on them in years. Then I hooked something a bit bigger that had the rod locked up and the little reel shedding line at an alarming rate. Had the drag as heavy as I dared and just stopped it before it reefed me. Then a long slow fight with the fish seeming to take 20 - 30 meters of line whenever I thought I had it done. Finally got it to the net.... a little rat sambo of about 50-55 cm. awesome fun. Released the sambo and went back to the skips but a 4ft bronzie decided he would move in and that was the end of the skippy. Was contemplating what to do next when a massive bust up 40 meters from the tinny made up my mind for me, lucky I had set up my tailor/salmon outfit (nitro magnum butt/branzino )and quickly cast a waxwing into the turmoil, flipped the bail over and I was on. wasn't long before I had a fat salmon in the net. Quickly fired another cast out to where the school was and two turns on the handle saw the waxwing smashed by something with a bit more grunt that a salmon. After about a 5 min fight in amongst the reefs and bommies out comes a very respectable 45-50 cm skippy. First time I have caught one on lure. Quickly released it and went hunting for the salmon for about half an hour with no luck before heading in. All in all a great little sesh.

There was plenty of action at Mewstones yesterday with a school of salmon taking everything thrown at them. Even my girlfriends young bloke caught his first salmon which almost pulled his arms out his sockets. We had a bit of a laugh when we had a double hook up only to discover my girlfriend and I were on to the same fish. we got it along side and both mullie baits had been taken by the same fish. I claimed it as my hooks were in deeper so therefore taken first..
All up there was probably a dozen boats out there and most were well behaved although some tangles were encountered with overcast lures travelling further than needed. All up it was a great start to the salmon season for us. I kept 5 salmon for some older blokes at my local pub who put them in the smoker and I get a bit of that..

 Headed out from Two Rocks on Sat arvo after a long time getting my mates boat, Justwright, up to fishing specs. Been on the hard stand getting a new paint job and a stack of other things fixed.

The weather reports were looking good for an overnighter earlier in the week and, as usual, changed to a bunch of mixed reports, depending on which site you checked, including a severe weather warning from BOM. Well the severe weather warning was removed and we were desperate to get a fish in so we headed out to the 40's in a light drizzel with light winds and started our night off.

The fishing was pretty slow and the light rain/drizzel continued until around 3am but the bloody wind just kept picking up.

First fish landed was a small Dhu by Darren and as it was size, well a fish in the hand...

Next on board was a nice Pinkie by John. His first fish for over a year i think.

We headed out to some nice Baldie ground that usually produces well around 2am. 60-70m with the wind still manageable but picking up and the rain still coming down.

Managed to get sweet FA but sharks and rays out there so around 5:30 started moving in stopping on any ground that looked good and had some fish shows on the sounder.

Darren again got the goods and picked up this nice 80cm Dhu.

The SSE wind was getting uncomfortable by mid morning so we started the long, slow, trip back to TR with a nasty cross sea.

The weather didnt play the game and the fishing was slow for us but we had a good night anyway. A lot of laughs that night and we dropped a few cracking fish that, as usual, were called for 17-20kg Dhuies. We released a stack of undersize Dhu and a few pinkies so it is good to see the stocks there for next year.

Love Rotto......quality fish within 10 minutes of Thompson Bay, which makes it easy to able to take the son, grandad, uncle and nephew out for a fish and get blackarse, baldies, KG's and even the odd dhu for the skipper.

Eating like kings for the rest of the week over here.

Nephew pretty pleased with one of 3 KG's.

Live bait tank wit some tasty morsels.

One for the Skip.

 Hi guys

Went out today and landed my first ever south west baldie.

Not a big one but it was sized so I'm pretty happy.

Congrats to Eddy and his crew on Pelagic Hooker for another amazing result.

Tough week for Pelagics, but a few crews seem to find them.

Callums 6.2kg Dolphin Fish on 1kg was an amazing catch for such a young kid. A pending WA and national record. Well done Mystic Knot.

Well, this was a bloody surprise. TimVB jigged this up on the weekend. It went bloody hard on PE3 and we were expecting a MUCH larger fish. Tim was very disappointed.....

Dirty Buff Bream I presume, but fought like 10 bastards! If only they took jigs more often....must have been Tim's weed like jig assist......haha.

Arrived 5am at the boat ramp on sunday with the aim of getting into some pink snapper off rotto. With a decent easterly at our backs and a 1.6m swell we arrived at our little spot on the north side of rottnest with 5 minutes to spare before sunrise (6.10am). A strong current moving in a east direction made it very tough to anchor as it was stronger than the 15 knot easterly blowing in the other direction. After 2 failed attempts we were finally where we wanted to be and quickly started floating mulies down in the current. Instantly we hooked up, excitement quickly disappeared as we realised it wasnt a fish but a big mutton bird, unfortunately for us we'd been spotted by a massive flock and we now had them hovering above and floating at the back of the boat, they would dive down over 10 metres to grab the sinking mulies which were weighted making it almost impossible to get anything down in the stroke zone. We were close to giving up when one rod went off and started pulling down, not up in the air. With massive head shakes I knew it was a snapper but after a short fight and me not putting enough drag on the fish I felt the line hit reef, snag up and it was over before I knew it. Thinking that we'd missed our only shot we were pretty gutted and over pulling in birds (we caught and released 8!) 30 minutes had past and all seemed quiet when another rod went off, after a nice fight on the light gear a 68cm model hit the deck and was quickly dispatched to the esky. Within minutes of pulling in the first fish we had a take on the soft plastic rod and up come a very nice 83cm pinkie. We went on to catch another at 75cm and also lost 2 more before the bite went quiet. Finished off the morning with a quick drift to pick up a solid harlequin and black ass. It was a rough ride home but we'll worth the effort in the end.

I decided to do a solo session on Sunday even though the forecast was not great with moderate easterlies predicted.  The forecast put the missus off and I did not have time to put a crew together.  

On the water at first light and by the time I passed between Carnac and Garden Islands, the sun was peeping over the eastern horizon.  At this stage I was dragging weighted scaleys behind the boat in anticipation for a keen taker.  Within minutes of the drift the Shimano Tekota 500 attached to the Shimano T-Curve Jig-200 started screeming summonsing me into action. After a decent tug it was time to land the fish only to have the landing net tangled with the SP rod - where was the deckie when I needed them!  After a short battle the first snapper for the day was boated - a pan sized fish of 70cm. From here I moved to FFB only to find the conditions pretty sloppy and uncomfortable causing me to change plan and head off back towards Garden Island.  

I eventually anchored up off the western shore of Garden Island and added a fair amount of burley to the water.  After a short while I landed a small shark and as the hook was being removed the rod with a scalie as bait bent over and started donating line at a rapid rate. I quickly got rid of the shark and after another decent fight landed a snapper of 76cm.  

The next couple of hours were uneventful with three rays testing the breaking strain of the braid on the reels.  I was back at the ramp just after midday to clean the fish and make my way home to prepare fresh snapper for tea.

Another wonderful day in this great country!!!!

YouTube clip  

https://youtu.be/NvytT9f64HM

 Had a great day today.

I'm on holidays at the moment, woke up and got ready, didn't launch until 8am.

Awesome weather landed a dhuie by 10 and went home. Mrs was nice to me at lunchtime.

Spent the arvo driving up the beach with the family and a couple of coldies. Just cooking some dhuie now.Perfect day.