the end resylt of the steep poibt fishing trip. 94kg  of snapper fillets. all land based.

 Hi all..

So happy today gonna keep it short and sweet,

caught this stonka 16.1kg snapper ((weighed with scales)) today off bunbury, on the stella 5k ....

THIS IS NOW THE WA RECORD DUE TO INCORRECT SCALES, AND WEIGHED IN AT 18.064KG

http://www.aaawa.iinet.net.au/WAFishRecordListScientificNameOrder.pdf

enjoy this pics

Best fishing trip of my life. went away with my farther in law and his mates to steep for there anual trip mind you theyve been going there for the last 30 years and was my first time there. we set up camp friday norning it was pissing down  and started fishing the point at about 1 all the oldies went to there spots and bagged a few baldies an pinkies,here i was went to a spot they advised not to go as i probly wouldnt catch anything only to come back with a days quota.all up bagged 94kg of pinkys baldies a few spanglies 1makkie and a parrot fish. then had to leave two days early because we ran out of our 30kgbox of mulies 6kg of fresh occy and 12 cartons. all in all best 6days fishing ive ever done.

Just wondering what type of shark this is

Awesome second ever deep drop off exmouth today.
Found new ground and landed a little black from 270m with a few Ruby's .Biggest ruby went 11kg and with the grey banded going 30kg

Went for a quick bream session with crugs1 this arvo around riverton.

Plenty of mullet jumping. Heaps of hooks ups that were dropped, ended up with this 40cm bream. Seemed pretty fat, not sure on weight, he was caught on a motoroil grub and released.

The natives getting restless could never be a good thing, but on this particular occasion – firing up the natives was simply awesome! The natives I am referring to in this instance are Yellowbelly and Australian Bass.

I must admit that I have a massive soft spot for bass and every time I head home to Bundaberg, I make a point of heading out to Lake Gregory with my kayak and try to get a amongst a few of these hard fighters. I have just recently spent a week at home in Bundaberg whilst on annual leave and on my last day there, I made it my mission to scope out some unchartered territory where we had never been before. My brother in law “Damo” and I spent the day exploring a small tributary of the upper Burnett River but not before 4WD’ing some likely goat tracks.

The Burnett River looks to be absolutely decimated and stripped bare by the recent and tragic flooding but the isolated tributary we found had a relatively small catchment area and seemed to be in pretty go knick. I didn’t know how this flooding was going to affect the fishing but to our delight, the fish were obliging. 
 

 hey guys fished or should i say battled mindarie rock wall wednesday night with a good mate and was rewarded with a nice pinkie. i was lucky enough to land it getting snagged twice when trying too surge it up for gaffing,had to open the bail arm twice .... big thanks to craig for gaffing, onya mate... ,ps lost one on friday arvo same rock same time....

Well fellow FW'ers that love coming up to fish off the little jetty or land based, RIP to Coolimba.

Just come back from a drive up that way and the road to the jetty is gone, only can get to the small jetty by engaging 4wd. There used to be a T-junction right to the jetty, left to the shacks that were left, no more only can go left to the shacks if you haven't got a 4wd, the small shed (jetty) that was there has one support dangling free, another big storm, think it will be swallowed up by the sea.

Jetty is badly damaged, newer planks (put maybe at the beginning of the cray seasons) on are half hanging into the water.  On the actual jetty where the cray boats come and tie up to, the left hand side of the wooden planks are hanging half into the water.  Massive amounts of seaweed are on the jetty.  Further to the right of the jetty and looking towards the beach, beach looks a lot cleaner than the last time we were there, a lot of seaweed has gone, water is still dirty, maybe take awhile to settle down to clear water.

To the left of the bay has been reclaimed by the sea all sand, right to the point be plenty of beach area once the sand has settled down and hardened, pretty soft when we went through but got through.  Couldn't believe how the first big storm had done so much damage or reclaimed a lot of the beach, dumped heaps of sand, should be a nice clean beach.

Can still see the people camped there at Easter, some where the ocean has reclaimed the land near the jetty, right around to the point at the left hahahah Nature is good.

All the tracks to LA, Point Liouse, entering from the gravel road off of Indian Ocean Drive (near the Tip) were all full of water/seaweed.  Grader was their pushing some of the water/seaweed off the roads, high tide didn't help either. As we drove through the surge was still coming in and dumping water on the tracks.   But was brilliant to watch the storm come in from Point Liouse, sea spray was all over the car, had to hose my baby down when we got home.

 EDITED...........SHOULD HAVE BEEN COOLIMBA ........... NOT ILLEWONG, BLONDE MOMENT or senior moment hahaha

PS.............after the blow the crays are running, friends are getting their limit (big jumbo's in the pots) every day they have gone out after the storm, roughly about  4miles out

Thats its folks, Leeman Report after the storm

 well today was a cracker i nailed 2 pinkies and helped gaffe a 19 kg mullaway wat a day heres the pics fellas.yeeeeeoooowwwww and its metro 

Ticked off a bucket list fish on a rfecent trip to Monkey Mia - always wanted to catch a cobia since i first saw them on TV.  Hooked onto this one in about 10 metres of water with a live bait.  towed the boat around for a while on 24 kg gear, max drag.  jumped clear of the water at one stage which was nerve racking but great to see.

Very happy to land it!

Me and my mate went out to get a feed of crabs not that long ago and while we were waiting for the pots to fill we decided it would be a good idea to have a little drift and a jig. 

We definitely had a few people wondering if we had lost the plot, but it was a good way to waste some time and talk some shit.

Being the middle of the afternoon we had absolutely no expectation of hooking into anything, but you never know and thats the beauty of fishing. 

About 20 minutes in my mate hooked into something and it took off. Needless to say we were stunned.

With the reel screaming away and being surrounded by moorings we decided it would be best to chase this badboy down instead of losing it to a mooring rope. 

I started the motor and began rounding him up. 

By this point we were pretty sure of what was on the end of the line, but neither of us said anything in case of jinxing it.

With Tom up the front of the boat and me driving it took 8 minutes until we saw a beautiful flash of silver.

It was a swan river mulloway!!!

As the boat had just been serviced everything had been taken out of the boat so there was no gaff, net, or knives.

So i took the rod ( technically this makes it a team effort fish ) and tom put his hand in the gills and lifted it in the boat. 

With the mulloway in the boat some serious shouting and high fives went down. 

What an awesome unexpected catch and something that i doubt i will see again.

I hope everyone else has the chance to see something equally unexpected and as wonderful as the midday mulloway.

Pete.

 After years of trying I finally caught my first mulla at a spot I have been fishing for a lifetime.  Sunday morning we started fishing at 6am and left at 9am 5 tailor 30 whiting and a somewhat malnaurished mulla. It went 1140mm and just pushed 10kg it was very skinny. It only fought for about 5 mins with only one short run before turning belly up in the breakers still my best catch yet. I was using a snelled whiting and it was caught at 7:50am, just thought I'd add some details rather than just "Northern beaches".

Headed up to cervantes on saturday arvo for a couple of days since the weather looked good
got up there around 5.30 headed down to the beach thought we would try to catch some fresh bait for the next day
out in the boat. for some reason no tailor or herring around so got out the cast net
and caught heaps of little mullet 10-15cm. so i decide to chuck out little dead mullet on the
drop off (if anyones been to cervantes they would no where im talken about) 10 mins
and rod was going nuts 20min battle on 2000 stradic 8lb line one of the best fights ive ever
had. finally got him to shore first big mullaway. You little ripper
Went 15kg

 Got upto West Moore Island for a couple of days fishing with the old man on Anzac day weekend. Left Perth airport at 8am to Port Hedland and was at the remote island fishing by 1pm!

Managed to get stuck into some fun little GTs inbetween tying dads leader knots. We were just using the tinnies supplied by the island so only stayed within a couple of k's of the island, fishing the points and channels on the rising tides. Also got stuck into the catch and release pool at low tide with 4lb bream gear - heaps of fun getting mini gts, blue bone, bream, whiting flattys all on little poppers/stick baits - also hooked a giant herring twice but spent more time in the air than in the water and spat the hooks both times. 

Theres meant to be good bottom fishing for reef species in close however we could only get small blue bones and cod around 30cms, and ended up spending most of the time chucking surface lures for the GTs that seemed to be plaguing the island. We were mainly using pretty light gear (PE1.5) as most of the GTs were 2-4kg but these guys still weant super hard for their size. Hooked a couple of unstoppables on my PE5 outfit but got busted off, ended up landing a pretty good size brassy on a laser pro with the bib removed (credit to dav-oh for getting me onto this, even the big ones still have great action and cast really well) . The Mackies hadnt fired up yet, and we saw plenty of big queenies but they werent on the chew. Had some tuna busting up one day and got a decent longtail on pe1.5.

Thanks to Fred, Action, Noel and Oni for looking after us, the island was really well run, great food, always had our beers on ice and noel even serviced one of my reels ! Will definately be going back!

Well there are many things I like about returning home to Bundaberg for holidays. Visiting family - yes, visiting friends - yes, but one of the things I look forward to the most is putting my kayak in at Lake Gregory and chasing a few bass.

Ended up going for a flick yesterday afternoon with the old man and concentrated our efforts in flicking weedless plastics around the edges of the thick weedbeds. Glorious day but the action was a little slow however. At the end of the day it was just nice to be out and about and NOT at work!!

I ended up landing a little catfish and a nice little 42cm bass.


Cheers

 hit up the mildura wreck for the first time after some local knowledge i gained whilst at the potshot yest. got there right on sunrise to experience one of the most awesome queenfish sesh ive ever had. would of landed at least 15 fish with some wicked airbourne action. they werent big fish (around the 50 to 60 mark) but great fun. the halco hammer did most of the damage. 

Had the chance to shoot up north a couple times earlier this year - monkey mia area. Always love fishing for pinkies on plakys with light spin gear - even the misses froths on it! The last couple years theres been plenty of bait around also - stick baiting for longtails and monster brassys. Tailor on the chew also - after realising my stickabaits were gettting low I ripped the bib off a few laserpros. These things are dynamite when casting into schools of pelagics or chasing the choppers with plenty of pauses. Especially the chrome varieties. Work them similar to my sinking stickbaits - on the up side, they can be worked across very shallow reefs without heading too deep into snag territory.  Much lighter on the hip pocket when your running out of Marias and Duos!

Just recently, I attended a trip to the legendary Jewel Reef (well almost). It was the culmination of 9 months of anticipation and planning, but the day we had all eagerly anticipated had finally arrived.

Most of our 13 man contingent hailed from Brisbane with only myself and my mate Guazzo residing from Northern Queensland. After meeting up with the group for a pub lunch in Cairns, it soon became obvious that our group was made up of a real good bunch of blokes of different ages and fishing preferences but one thing that was set in stone was the fact that we were all mad keen and all portrayed an obsession for fishing. So much so, that our wives/girlfriends barely got a mention over the course of the 5 days and any conversation revolved around stickbaits, plastics or the gear ratio on the latest Stella 20000SW.

Simply touching down and stepping foot on the exclusive Lizard Island made me feel like I was living the lifestyle of the rich and the famous. A few beers and a feed at the laid back Marlin Bar had us chilled out and excited about the journey we were just about to embark on.

The 3 metre swells did nothing to phase the skipper of Reel Chase (Brett) and the two deckies (Jake & Kiwi), in fact rougher conditions were looked on more favourably in terms of a successful marlin bite. I was one of the 5 from our group who elected to try catch a marlin on the first day. Halco Laser Pro’s were deployed on 2 of the Tiagra 12 Wides in an effort to troll up some shark mackerel to use for marlin bait. It took all of 5 minutes before the ratchet on one of the reels starting singing that sweet tune. Guazzo was the man on strike and took no time to subdue a descent size shark mackerel to the deck. Within the next hour, we had another few of these fish as well as a few Mack Tuna in the bait-hold.

Deckhands Kiwi and Jake wasted no time in gutting and stitching these baits up in preparation to try convert them into something a lot bigger and preferably something with a big, long bill on the front of it. It wasn’t hard to see that Kiwi had done this a few times before as he made this surgical procedure look oh so easy.

3 mackerel skip baits were deployed on each of the Tiagra 130’s and hooked up to the outriggers. Here began the waiting game. We all took turn at taking 30 minutes on strike whereby if any of the rods went off within your allocated 30 minute stint, the fight was yours.

Half an hour later, foaming white water from around the skipbait and a long bill slashing from side to side indicated another marlin strike. This time it was Guazzo’s turn at strike. Robson Green yells of “Get In” circulated around the back deck. Yes, finally a fish that stayed connected. Guazzo knocked this little 200lb marlin over relatively quickly but not before an impressive acrobatic performance.

At the end of day 2, a decision was mate to travel further afield which gave us all a greater diversity of options. These included exploring the coral-lined creeks on the island for mangrove jack (yes folks, coral-lined creeks), land-based GT/trout popping and bommie popping on the back deck of Reel Chase. Obviously the first choice option was GT popping from Reel Chase but we opted to offer this option to those he hadn’t gone out and ventured too much.

Guazzo, Damien (Wolfpack) and myself decided to pop a reef edge whilst land-based from the island. This spot looked absolutely magic. It was low tide which enabled us to walk about two-thirds of the way out to the reef edge and pop over the drop-off. The only problem with this was that there was still a good 25-30m of shallow reef between where we were standing and the edge which was just too deep for us to wade through. Having this shallow, jagged, reefy bottom between us and any potential fish certainly was going to test the men from the boys and make fighting and landing a fish from this position near-on impossible.

Wolfpack was the first to load up on his big Stella and Saltiga rod. The GT smashed his garfish style popper in less than 3 feet of water and lasted all of about 3 seconds before it blew him away despite using heavy gear.

I grabbed the Stella 20000 and GT Special popping rod from the back deck of the boat and took it with me just in case. Seeing Wolfpack get dusted up so quickly and the sore point of my GT loss the day previous, ensured I went out with the big guns blazing straight away. I casted out the big gear and was automatically followed by a 4 foot long reef shark. On the very next cast, he snaffled my popper which led to a torrid little battle amongst the shallow, reefy outcrops until it was landed. Wolfpack also landed a smaller version and Guazzo got bitten off by one as well.

The big outfit was starting to weight a ton, so I reverted back to my 5-8kg T-Curve/Stradic 4000Ci4 combo and threw out a much smaller 105mm Halco Roosta popper to see if I could pick up something a little more manageable...maybe a trout or other reefy? A massive eruption behind my popper happened within the first few “bloops” over the ledge. It appeared to be a swing and a miss but on the very next “bloop”, my little popper was smashed by what I assume to be a good GT. It had me busted off on a bommie before I could even blink.

Wolfpack picked up the big gear and was also owned by a good GT a short time later. It turned out that the only way we may have had half a chance at landing one of these bruisers would have been if we were in the dory flicking towards the drop-off and bringing the popper back toward the deep but due to the rough conditions, the dory was in-operable.

Once we got back to the mother-ship, we were told that the guys who went GT popping on board Reel Chase ended up with 5 nice GT’s, the best being around 15-20kg.

The boys who went exploring the island creeks ended up with about 15 quality mangrove jacks as well as a swag of tarpon. Clearly this fish had never seen a lure before. This sounded like an option I could not pass up and would be my plan during the low tide on the final afternoon.

Dawn broke on the final morning of the trip. It was now high tide and with the water up at this level, it only left one descent point on the island worth having a flick. Long-toms, stripeys and barracuda were the main stayers for the morning but it was Steve who landed a beautiful coral trout on stickbait and was the best fish of the morning.

A few hours later, it was now low enough where we could trek up the creek to where the jacks were caught on the previous day.

The island creeks on Howick Island were like nothing I had ever seen before. These creeks were mangrove lined but had a floor of coral. They were absolutely beautiful. An old faithful 4 inch Atomic Prong (Red Pumpkin) was rigged up in attempt to catch myself some of these much anticipated red fish. Despite the majority of Jacks from the previous day being released, the Jacks seemed to have been spooked and relatively shut down. The only Jack that was caught during this second session was caught by me and was caught on the Prong.

It just goes to show, that when the fish shut down and wise-up to our artificial offerings – the Atomic Prong still gets results due to its extremely life-like appearance. This was a cracker Jack (no pun intended) at about 48cm and my second best Jack to date. 5 casts later I was onto another fish and thought it was another Jack. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a little Red Throat Emperor connected to my Prong. It was such an amazing experience to catch a characteristically reef orientated, demersal fish, amongst a coral lined, mangrove walled creek.

This was a great trip. It could have been absolutely epic if the weather gods decided to play the game and give us just a little reprieve and salvation, but it was not to be, and that is fishing sometimes. Ultimately, we made the best out of a bad situation and left no stone un-turned. This is all any die hard angler could do in this circumstance. Some great fish were still landed and we had a ball with a great bunch of blokes.

*

 to the 60s yest

 Here's a little video i've chucked up of a recent trip down to Albany, hope you enjoy!

http://youtu.be/NiekfjT0ckU

 As just as i was about to leave :(

im pretty sure it was salmon and tailor chasing them couldnt really tell as they were 100m+ out

I counted 16 baitschools

Caught in the Swan whilst swinging off a mooring in 2 meters of water. Three nets for three crabs over a three hour period around midday. Two went 180 and the other 172..
So very sweet and full too the brim...

Here's a couple of Freshwater Dhufish I jigged up out of 20m from a little freshwater soak nowhere near Cervantes or Coral Bay.

 hit high tide today at 1030. fish jumping everywhere. caught heaps of little trevs and queenies with this brute of golden. very nice fish didnt get a chance to measure him but he was around the 4.5 to 5kg range. awesome fight had me snagged for brief moment. sienna 4000d matched with a team diawa 4 to 8kg,20lb fireline with a 30lb flouro leader and the magic 40g gold twisty which if you look closely is beaten and scarred 

Been trying off the boat a lot for snapper in the sound but not having much luck :( , here's a few fish I caught land based lately though. There's a few more shark pics but won't let me upload.

 title says at it all. expected a bigger fish. great fight for their size. not bad eating either

 Caught this shovel nose the other day on my thunnas 8000 on live yellow tail, went hard on 30lb braid, released well after a couple pictures. Caught it down at the ammo jetty.

Cheers.