hmm....might just have to stay inshore or onshore then.....bream fishing anyone??

Speaking of that, saw quite a good bream landed under the narrows late yesterday afternoon. Depends what the conditions are like over the weekend, still keen to get offshore even if its inshore, just depends on the onshore. ;)

Think the 3 mile might have to be in order, heard lots of rumours from divers that theres mackies schooling up out there.

Could always go out to Salmo's inshore pinky spots. Just need to get out there for a fish after last weekend's success.

SSE in the morning till mid afternoon is an offshore breeze in most parts of WA, no?

Sooo if you applied the rule of 10's...

Thats 10 ft of boat for every 10 knots of wind....an 15ft + to 18 ft boat say, would be fine out there for a short morning fish no? (long as the combined wind waves and swell don't exceed 1.5 - 1,8 meters on the wavebuoy!)..

Is that the kind of thinking you use to decide, to go or stay?

If not why not? (i.e if it's a 15ft V nosed punt, river boat...with low freeboard...you wouldn't take it 24Nm across from Denham to Dirk Hartog Isl and then another 42Nm up Dirk Hartog to Witnell bay...in those conditions would you?).

Least you wouldn't catch me doing it!

Yeah - coz ya couldn't keep up! he he he!

Who said I'd never make it?

Cheers!

that is mad....
v-nose?? didnt see any in the first pic...hehe

Hey All,

This is my first comms on a site like this , just registered... Thinking of heading out this weekend on a mission to land my first Pinkie. I have had a boat for about 3 years now and all I have yet to master in any sense of the word is Sand Whiting & Herring.... Sad....But True. I generally go off Hillarys for herring or motor down to Cott for the whiting. I have a 4.2m Quinnie so heading far offshore is out of the question. Can anyone help..?? I get frustrated with the advise I get from Tackle shops, they can only go as far as SELLING me everything in the store but when it comes to real advice, they get shady. Don't get me wrong I not asking for GPS co-ordinates of your secret spots, I can only endeavour to find my own. Just looking for some good logical advice to get me started & increase my chances...
Anyone need any help with Whiting/Herring...??? Unlikley, but I'm your man!!

Cambo

Hey Cambo,

Welcome to the site, hope we can be of some assistance. Well here is this weekends weather update for a start:

Saturday: S/SE winds 13/18 knots tending S/SW 13/18 knots by the afternoon and increasing to 18/23 knots during the afternoon. Seas to 1.5m. Swell 1.5m rising to 2.0m later.

Sunday: E/SE winds 15/20 knots tending S'ly 18/23 knots in the afternoon.

Certainly doesn't look like it is going to be too special, but a trip not far out of the Hillaries heads still might find good fish. It certainly seems a few of our other members have been having some luck not very far out and in shallow water. Generally the snapper fishing is a bit better when its rough.

What sort of sounder do you have in your quinnie as I reckon that is probably the most essential element you need. Finding the school or schooling fish is key to getting yourself onto some good ones.

2ndly is to have an awesome berley trail in which you bring the fish to you. Once you have them in feeding mode (you will be able to tell when you watch your echo sounder as the school will get thicker and occasionally depending on your depth you will see them come and eat the cubes not far down) It really depends what sort of fish you get schooling as you never know what might come along on the 3 mile reef system. We always found that when the crays are inclose that the berley trail from the crayboats/pots is a good place to start and helps find some good nuggety ground.

I could write an essay on this, but its a start.. If theres anymore questions feel free to ask and hopefully we can help out.

Cheers,
Adam

Adams given some good advice......burley mate burley....

weather looks average...not toooo bad...just a bit wet.

Keen Adam?????

I'm keen to get onto some of those pinkies you been finding mate!!!

But get the feeling I might end up as a drowned rat in the pinkie palace. Might have to fall back onto the skippers boat with the covers, think their is going to be some splash damage tomorrow!

Well, I have only recently bought the quinnie, after getting rid of my "old beast", so have not yet had a chance to fit a sounder yet? Again a bit of a novice when it comes to sounders too, what would be recommended?
In the meantime the only thing I can do is, look for the other boats or look for a cluster of cray pots to find decent ground?? What do ye reckon?
Cheers for the advice, I'll berley up like mad, see how it goes..

Whats the best universal bait along 3 mile?

Cheers
Cambo

Ok, theres your number 1 priority to finding some good fish, get yourself an echo sounder, doesn't necessarily have to be a colour one, but they take a lot of effort out of it. Navman are pretty good in our books.

When you get out to the Hillaries/Rottnest marker poles head down until you are inline with Hale Rd, if you have polarised sunglasses on a sunny day you can see the breaks in the reef and anchoring up anywhere around there will put you in a decent vicinity of potentially catching fish, but without a sounder, it makes life a lot more difficult.

Pinkies are suckers for mulie cubes, whole mulies, occy and squid. We generally take a variety of bait, old mulies to berley with and good half frozen ones to cube up and use on the hooks. But you just never know, anything can work. First and foremost thou is to get yourself a sounder, it will make your fishing days that much easier, promise! :)

Cheers,
Adam

No worries, will give it a go... I'll report back with the outcome.

Thanks again.
Cameron

Hummingbird B/W Matrix 37 look pretty good as well. For around $650 for one....great value....

I like floating snelled mulies down to the pinkies....

chook pellets are good burley as well
[img_assist|fid=17909|thumb=0|alt=another one from last trip out in the dark]

Went out today, tried a few different things, first bottom bouncing spot produced a couple of sgt baker. After a few more drifts and not much happening we moved out to the containers and tried jigging and bottom bouncing, not much action except for a 10 cm wrasse. (lol) We then moved out to the Furuno Fad which didn't look like it was holding anything, a quick squall blew in so we headed back to the 40 m bottom bouncing spot. Managed to pick up 2 small blackass and 2 baby fox fish which we released. The wind soon swept in and we headed back near on fishless. This morning absolutely flew by, it was over before it all really began. Oh well, spose you can't get it good every week. :(

Took Fishless Pete out again along with our old boss from Bankwest Alan Pavisich. Alan has been battling a severe form of cancer for about 6 months now and was between kemo treatments so he was amped to get out on the water while he was still well enough.

Given he wasnt in any condition to stay out on the water too long and the wind was supposed to be a bit stronger than it was, we decided we would just hit Staggies and troll for a couple of hours and then get some Whiting and finally stop off at quinns to burley up some herring.

The day started with bearly a breath of wind and I was quietly cursing that I should have brought the big guns and gone out wide. But I was on a mission, to try and get a Spaniard. So I resisted the temptation and hung in close to Staggies,

We headed out on the South leads and trolled North. As soon as we hit 18m and directly behind the North edge of Staggies all three rods went off. Judging by the short low toned rachet screams I knew it wasn;t a Spaniard, instead all three of us battled little 2kg Bonito back to the boat. Alan had a ball, whooping and hollaring all the way. We kept all three and dispatched them for future sashimi. (Bled in a bucket of sea water then placed on ice in the esky.

We set the spread again I was using twin laser pro 190's on each of the wide rods and Fishless had a crazy deep in the prop wash. For three passes we hooked up three times, each time at least a double if not triple hook up, so unfortunately I didn;t get a chance to get anything decent on camera.

After trolling all the way up to the alkimos without a spaniard we headed back and with the wind almost non exisitent we headed out to 33m for some whiting. Again double and triple headers was the norm and in no time at all we had 20 or so plump sandies.

Time to head back in (again resisting the temptation to bang out to some reefy ground)this time with a view to getting some herring. You see yesterday seabreeze dot com was showing quite a windy day ahead and with us not wanting to risk too much of a bumpy ride for Alan we had decided to gear up for herring and gardies. Fishless had organised some wogs and his secret burley recipe. So we were well equiped. I had my light bream gear on board so we were ready to go. We anchored up close to Quinns reef and got jack sh!t. The burley was doing its job but it seemed the fosh weren't around.

We moved around a couple of times until stopping just north of the first break. The slick went out and we started again, only this time the fish were cooperating.

Its been about 2 years sib=nce I have been herring fishing from my boat and I had forgotten how much fun it can be on light gear. Wehad tail walks, double and even triple headers. Alan had a ball and so did Fishless and myself.

Alan thinks Fishless is call fishless, not because he can't find or catch fish, but because he can't get them aboard. Pete had dropped countless fish at the side of the boat. For every one he got in the esky he had another two jump off the hooks boatside.

We finished the day with about 8 Bonito (5 released) about 25 Whiting, 30 plus herring and a couple of gardies, add to that a lone skippy and it wasn't a bad day after all catching bread and butter fish for the first time in absolutely ages. Pics will follow.

Spent the weekend with the gf so didnt get much fishing in till tontite, went to city beach for a few hours.

Got some whiting for baits plus one worth keeping(31cm sandy). Then after dark tango'd with chopper tailor for an hour or so before coming home to a nice CC and coke.

The whitings in the fridge to put with the bbq tomorow night, not much but im sure itll taste good ;)

Well its good to hear you guys got a couple, better than our tally.

You made the right decision to hang in close Andy, it wasn't that special further out as the lack of wind and movement weren't helping the fish bite. ;*

The old man managed to get out down at Peaceful bay over the weekend and managed a couple of 60cm dhuies, blackass, nannygai, few other reefies and 2 monster cuttlefish. Not too bad a day even thou he was seasick as a dog after a big night out on the fishermans port, thatll teach ya! :)

A mate went down to north mole this morning and caught 5 bonito in no time, he said it was a pretty hot session down there with a heap of people getting into them.

If you don't have a boat and want to catch bonito, north mole is where you want to be.

was it packed from 4am as usual?? Getting sick of turning up there at 4am and absolutely packed in with 100 ppl. Good thing I've found another spot and it produced 6 bonitos and hardly anyone around.

Well, as promised, I'm reporting back on the weekends fishing.

Headed out past the Hillarys/Rotto markers and lined up with Hale Road. The offshore was blowing its arse off & the water visibility was terrible. After 2 hours of zig zagging around trying to locate the reef (normally I know when I'm there coz the skippy turn up in droves) I gave up and headed to my trusty whiting spot and got a few plump ones & then headed back to Hillarys and cleaned up on the hezza bags (most went back in). Never seen so many herring in all my life, unbelieveble, they were thick as.
So you can see, still only managing the Whiting and Herring, which is becoming very demoralising (spelling??)to say the least. Need to get a good GPS, any recommendations on those?
How would I go about getting GPS co-ordinates for the outline/location of say Hale Road Reef. Some times I find it sometimes I don't. Some people say, to "line up the double white lines on Hale Road and head out until you can see it, YOU CAN'T MISS IT!" once I got half way to Rotto with not even a glimour of it.
HELP!!

Cheers for the report Cambo!

Interestingly you say that about gps, our skipper has just bought a chart plotter and is thinking of selling his handheld gps in the coming weeks. Will get him to get in touch with you if you like, not sure on the price, but might be worth a look.

I will get you a gps mark for hale rd if you like, then you can't miss!
Let me know,
Cheers,
Adam

Cheers Adam,

If he does decide to sell the handheld GPS I would be very interested, thanks for that. Yeah if you have a gps mark for Hale Road Rf that would be awesome, and would save me looking like a total baboon out there. Will be much appreciated, cheers!

Next week I'm heading down to Augusta, to visit a mate who's a keen fisher down there, latley he has been doing well on soem big Jews & Pinkys. So with any luck, I should be able to share some better stories & pics as evidence I didn't drive for 4 hours in my 1978 Fairlane just to catch another Herring!!
Cheers
Cambo

No worries Cambo, I'll speak to him tonight. Will send you a message about finding hale rd reef.

Augusta is the home of big jewies.

Check out these one's caught down there last year by Walky and his mates. Hope you manage to get into some big ones as well, let us know how you go.

http://fishwrecked.com/node/105

That's a Genesis in the background if I'm not mistaken. They are obviously Dhuie magnets. (Hehehehe)