Managed to get out on the last day of the Sound season. After trying several spots, eventually found them and it was on! Multiple pinks and left them biting at 10am ( so much for pinkys only feeding at dawn/dusk) as I'd had plenty and also the number of boats fishing close to me was increasing... . 

Been a good season from what I can see and more than half my fish this year have come on Zman plastics. Burley is definitely the key.

Now just need to find some KG spots

Cheers 

 Bled at our usual spot. Was packing up but then go a heads up from the guru. Some donkey snapper out there.

Boys got some crackers tonight. Biggest tad under 1 m . Ians boat got some good ones also. His biggest went 12.5 over the magic meter mark.

 Went for a gander down at a Rokko boat ramp last night on sunset and bumped into Moking and also had a chat to another fisher who just came in from the sound. Wasn't going to go out fishing but I convinced the missus to race home, get the boat and see if she could catch her first ever snapper.

We headed out at 7:30pm and was quickly smashed by a squal that came through which had the boat rocking and rolling and I was sure the missus was going to start heaving on the deck. She normally gets sea sick in the swimming pool. Once it passed and the rain settled I put two rods out and we started the wait. About 30 minutes in her rod started peeling line and she swooped on it like a seagull on a chip.. now the tricky part came into play, how to coach her on what to do with a big fish without treating her like a little kid and thus landing myself in the shite.. well she played that fish like a boss and soon I had the gaff in hand it was on the surface.. A quick swipe from me, a loud shreak from her and it was on the deck and my fishing future was secured. 

Her first ever pinkie went 890mm and just on 8kg. We were so stoked with that one fish for her we packed up and went home..

Happy days team....

A few recent catches. Old Herring arn't to bad if you can be bothered cleaning a few...

 Ah well.. the snapper ban is almost on, been such a good season. Went out solo yesterday and boated 10 fish all on plastics,  4 at 90cm and the rest 85-89cm so to say i was happy was a understatement. Tried for a fish on fly for 2 hours with no success. So i thought why not try again this morning and get my wife a few fish so she could try get a pb too! Launched at 4am this morning in the rain bianca wasnt convinced at all but we persisted and another epic morning 5 fish landed and dropped a few aswel.. bianca getting a few fish and a pb at 84cm. I tried again on fly and nailed a pb of 87cm! Soo happy to get one on the deck finally after the last one i hooked got sharked. So heres a few pics of the last 2 days. Restricted to 50mb which dosent allow many photos

 Managed to duck out for a couple of hours yesterday with grandsons and again cleaned up on KG, an easy dozen 40cm plus thumpers. Young Jake (8) caught 2 and then caught and landed a nice gummy shark 1200 cm. Big KG in 5 meters of water is great fun.

Tonight. Away from everyone. Solid pinks . 4 caught .

Probably been one of the better snapper seasons ive had, plenty of fish and absolutely nailing plastics since ive been home the last 2 weeks. Plenty of big fish around, mostly 85-87cms, also did 3 trips in a row where we landed a 90cm+ fish each trip. Enjoy the pics fellas.

First trip this r&r

New PB at 94cm

My brother with a new PB at 93cm caught on 10lb and plastic.

Goatlobster with an angry one.

Joelborg92 with a new PB at 90cm.

Headed out yesterday with my brother for one last hit at it before going to work, fish were on the chew big time after Saturdays blow. 10 fish for the session all on plastics, all releasewd, back at the ramp by 9am. Dropped a fish on stickbait when the trebbled opened up which was a bummer as thats been a goal this year, pink on stickbait. Will be back home just before the ban to give it another go.

This was a brand new jighead out the box before the session, accounted for 8 fish in the boat and a few more dropped, didnt have to replace the plastic once, Zman 7in Streakz with a Halco octo-skirt sweetener.

Some very solid fish tonight . Flesh quality was great. No milky colour at all . Great night except got grumpy little johnny :) everyone ended up with great feed

 just a few snapper from my hobie kayak out of the cockburn sound.

 Fattest gummy I've caught to date.

 In loving memory of my grandad who passed away last weekend a close mate of mine headed out for a fish. He loved fishing and has shared many a family trade secret with me when I was a young tacker. The trip didn't go to plan at first with no burley and only a dozen mullet. Also to make matters worse forgot my tackle bag. So we had three rods and three rigs. We anchored with not much hope as we had basically gone out with nothing. First thing we brought up was a big cuttle fish you beauty bait. Boy we're we in for it. From the time of the first cuttlefish bait dropped to the last the pinky action was insane. In less then an hour had caught close to 16 pinks ranging from 900 to well over a meter. We made the call only to keep the ones that were badly hooked. Let's just say grandad had our back and gave us a memory that will be with me forever. RIP Grandad

 hey just spent saturday and sunday in jurien to enjoy the good weather, was spoilt with some good fishing. the fish were on the chew,

3 of us on the boat and had 2 baitos and me on the placcies. safe to say the placcies killed it with the halco paddleprawn in white being the standout.

the flickbait in white too aslo tamed a few fish. heres a few pics i got in between the hot session.

Tried to spend some brief time before the demersal ban prospecting for new fishing spots ... rule has become 1-2 minute drops only, and only drop when the sounder lights up with significant activity, or else move on. Love looking for new ground ... you never know what you are going to get! Fish pulled off random sounder drops below. Cheers

 Landed this big fella today drifting in the 20s also release a few more 70cm fish good day out turned rough this arvo though

Hello crew,

Thought I would share a couple of pics from the past two weeks of fishing and spearfishing/freediving. First pic is my pb snapper of 13kilos and length of 1020. As the story goes spent a day the weekend before sounding for ground and came across a lump in the desert. Put try on the way point and moved on. Next week after work took the old boy out, along with another mate to the mark. Sounded around and solid fish popped up so down went the pick and started the burley. About 20mins in my old boy was on and just about got ripped over side he was using his brand new talica 8 on a saltiest hyper. Unfortunately didn't stay connected. 5 mins later I watched one of my talica set ups bend slightly then spring back up. Grabbed it de baited and thought you mongrel. Looked at my talica 12 set up and the rod was doing the same only the rod stayed bent. Straight up I called it for a ray as there was no movement and the rod was loaded up. After a few minutes I though greats it's sealed the hooks. Was I in for a shock when I lent into the fish. After a tussle I landed it and was so stoked to crack a meter.

 Went for a squid session with Little Johnny today and while we were out we made the call to head in, change boats, grab his son Luke and head back out for a snapper session. I was backing up from a couple of nights ago and was keen to get into them again. Once again they were on the bite and we bagged out in under an hour with some cracker fish coming onboard. 

A great snapper session and I think this one will be hard to beat..

 Well after a bit of trial and error and spending some time out searching for the fish i finaly got onto a few nice pinks in Cockburn Sound. I arrived with a mate at our chosen ground at 4:30pm and got set for (hopefully) a good session. Wihin a couple of hours there ended up being a pile of boats in the general area and I was hopefull that we would be onto the fish with all the interest from the others. Well we waited and waited and waited. Our first couple of strikes happened at 8:15pm and we failed to hook up. My mate and I adjusted our next baits to expose the hooks a bit more and at 9pm we were both on at the same time. One busted off and one landed, stoked. At about this time the other boats had all but gone home. At just after 10pm we caught another two nice pinks and the final one came onboard at 11pm. We also dropped a couple of fish in this time and busted a couple off.

So after nearly 8 hours on the water I think we have our act together regarding rigs, drag, bait, position, how many beers to take along and certainly how to remain patient and optomistic that we will get our bag. I'm not sure if the other boats who left earlier had caught their fish or it was just time to go home but I'm happy we stayed on. I will add that I'm pretty sure my neighbours weren't all that impressed with my night out when I rolled into the small street at midnight and proceeded to put the boat away and high five the missus in the driveway after a succesful night.    

Finally after a Winter of the daughters Netball Saturdays and the boys footy Sundays we had a free weekend to head out. Which I enjoy being a part of by the way.

Great conditions on Saturday. Sitting on 30knots to and from spots of Two Rocks. 

Fishing in around 40m area plenty of Dhuies on the bite with a heap of them released. I tried fitting a little glow in the dark plastic squid skirt to the bottom hook

on my paternoster rig as a teaser along with some bait which I have not done before and they hooked up on that bottom hook everytime. I know you have more chances on the bottom hook

but I reckon the teaser helped.

Back home at lunch time with a nice mixed bag of Dhuies, pinky and breaksea a great feed while watching the Eagles win.

Talk about a day of highs.

 what a day to be out great conditions went out from mindarie around 830am got out around the 30's whales whales whales everywhere fishing was slow until around 1 oclock then we drifted over some good ground and picked up these two baldies drifted again and got another two then another two all decent size only kept two the rest where released was a suprise for where we were acually fishing... 28m deep! decided to move on do some trolling landed nothing had a yellowatil king follow the lure but turn away from the lure in the end seen some pots on some ground we already had marked dropped a little placcy and a jig just near the pot and had a double hook up i lost my fish on jig but the missus got this cracking 78cm pinky went back over the pots and dropped down the placcy again and lqanded this big breaksea cod headed back in for a quick squid -nothing then came home and watched the sunset  whilst washing the boat and having a beer was a crackin day !!

 Took my 2 grandsons Koby 8 and Jake 6 for a quick trip into Warnbro sound for some whiting, hopeful anyway, 1st drop Koby lands a 41cm KG and the last drop Jake lands a 61cm monster, 6 nice fish in between and thats our limit, best 30 minutes of fishing I have had in a long time.

 Cracker of a day yesterday off Jurien bay. Dhuies everywhere and had a surprise cobia take my jig as it was falling to the bottom, it had me guessing what it could be for about 15mins until we got it to the boat for a visual. I was convinced it was a stingray and was considering busting it off but I didn't wanna have to re tie my leader so stuck it out and so glad I did haha, went 19kg on the bathroom scales back home. Also had a horse sambo and some nice dhuies, all on 30lb gear except for the sambo which was on the 50lb.

No matter where we moved to we kept catching dhuies, so with 2 dhuies and the cobia already in the esky we figured we had enough fish and decided to head in rather then risk any more dhuies not surviving after release. Plenty of whales to keep us entertained on the drive back in.

An awesome day which has made up for loosing a horse Mackie up at gnaraloo a month ago which is still haunting me, but that's another story. 

Many years in the making this fish, not the exact one I've been chasing but still over the moon!

This one happened about a week into a trip and over 100NM off southern Fiji with Jaga Crossingham, making my fifth trip over there chasing the big ones! This day started with an early morning session at a Dogtooth Tuna haunt, which ended up being far more productive for oversized spanish instead this day, always good to know your fish tax to the local village is sorted early in the day. Following that we continued the daily pattern of filling in the less fishy part of the day by putting the lures out and trawling some of the current side reef edges for wahoo and saily's, we put a few smaller wahoo in the boat and decided we were getting enough hook ups that it would be worth jumping in and seeing if there were any big ones amongst the school.

Matt and I were first to jump in and have a look around hanging off the reef in around 100m of water waiting for something to come through, we didn’t have flashers in the water so relied on the likelihood that the fish would be curious enough to have a look at us. Sure enough about ten minutes into the drift I see the first fish in the school sneaking behind my dive buddy Matt for a look, knowing that the fish were here I frisbeed a double sided CD out in front of me and ignored the school for ten seconds or so making sure not to make any eye contact or quick movements. I looked back and could see the biggest fish of the school coming aggressively towards the now flashing CD and decided it was a good time to approach as it wasnt focusing on me, a small dive to about 5m saw the fish come right between me and the CD allowing me to put an easy shot into the back third of the fish where all the tougher flesh is. Giving me plenty of confidence that it would hold!

From there the fish took off with my float for about 15 minutes and Matt and I had to eventually get picked up by the boat as we were miles behind the fish at this stage. The guys in the boat were excited with Jaga saying he had been following the floats which were doing 8 knots next to the boat for the last ten minutes. Matt and I jumped back in a took a more rushed approach to getting the fish into our hands as the sharks were starting to get heated and keen for a meal! A Second shot by Matt at around twenty metres and we could confidently drag it to the surface! A few hi-fives and screams in the water and jumped on the boat for a photo!

Fish got weighed to satisfy my own curiosity, but I always find it much more fun to let others speculate and guess. Considering writing a full trip report at some stage soon, but its a start. 

Good old Neil Hendy . He had no fish ,after many attempts at pinks. Went back to same spot where me and Luke got 4 Dhues (2 doubles). Where andy also got Dhues and blue groper . Didn't let us down Neil got double header . I got single one . First drop again . All 3 sized kept big one ,and moved on ( left the rest for boys). Next spot . Dhues again. We came in 10 ks using small hooks , small baits Dhue after Dhue . Ended up with 2 kgs , 2 Dhues and harlequin again. Great day.

Sounded some new ground out from dawesville with the first drop landing a 630mm dhu, 10 minutes later my mate landed a double header! 530mm dhu and a black ass. I then hooked onto something BIG! Turned out to be a double header also, this time a 1m+ sambo & a 600mm dhu. Sambo was dropped boat side and the 600mm dhu released. Fresh as fresh occy doing the trick for bait.

 Headed down to Harvey Dam. Stocks looked healthy from fisheries so was hopeful of bagging a few. Certainly produced the goods with 4 bows between 2-4lb. Home for lunch. 

Decided next day, same deal with the many other fish sighted day before. 8 bows between myself and a mate, all 3-4lb. Done in time for breakfast at pinjarra bakery. 

Usual dumb X Broods, but can't complain. Flesh is still pink, and condition hasn't deteriorated too bad yet. 

Left them alone Father's Day with potential crowds.  

Cranked out the smoker and cooked up a feed for family and friends. Delish!

Hoping to do a bit more this year over demersal ban.

 Haven't been on here for a while. Thought I'd post some pics from recent trip To coral bay July/Aug which we do each year. Weather was skeptical from forecasts predicting some strong winds and medium seas. Certainly only weather that accommodates only the truly keen. 

First day, 20-25kts with 2m seas (this was the norm) . Though we stick not too far out (5km) or so. Pleasantly surprised with all 3 boats bagging out with decent reds and rankins. Plus your usually northern varieties of nw snappers, robos, trevally, cods etc. (too many to list). By no means easy with battling the weather.

second day, no fishing and decided maybe oysters were a better option. As same forecast.

Day 2: same weather patterns. But yolo! Stayed close so not to be too stupid with rough weather. Tried even a troll. Sharks were hit on any macks hooked, few barra for bait we didn't mind tho, so gave that in quickly after loosing a few hard bodies. Bottom bashing Efforts Turned up decent fish once again, same variety of decent reds, big rankins  loads of other species.

Day 3: rough...again. But big things were on the bite. Big reds (few 10kg+), big rankins (8kg+), pearlys, and pain in a%# cobia. But certainly big reds were a surprise being only 5km out.

Day 4: essentially accepting rough weather is still a the common trait with 20-25knt winds and 2m seas. Again big reds, big robos, big pearls, big tomato cod and big rankins. If it wasn't rough as guts, it would be the best trip yet over past years. 

Day 5: this was to be the day! 15knts dropping of to 0 at midday. Shot out 60k to 300s and only prehistoric monsters were boarded. Heaps of grey bands, 4 greyband were over 20kg and biggest went 27.5 on the lie detector. Rest were upwards of 15kg and a few small Ruby's to boot. We were certainly popular in town at  filleting table, lots of photos and compliments. And few offended vegans...

Not one day could we get out southern passage, but certainly was best trip yet fish, quantity, quality and size. 3 boats, 6 keen fishos, 4 days of surfing rough weather. 1 day of pure bliss and monsters.

see you next year coral bay!

Had my little Luke as deckie. We had a ball. Dhues. Pinks sharks ect . Everything bar kg, had fantastic day. Best of all got home grandson there. Apparently he isn't going to be fisherman lol. My daughter has another thing coming . No lie best day ever . Good laugh .

 Went out around 10am today drifted over some good ground and picked up this dhue and kg drifted again and picked up two more 60cm dhues both released good day out