Seems quiet on the cray front with nobody really talking much about them so I though I would throw a line.

We went out today and got 9 keepers diving with a couple of soft ones amonst them. Seems the second run hasnt happened yet. Does anyone have any theories??

PS Aussie V Kiwis cant wait t... Cmon Aussies!!

 Hello all.

It's that time of the year again when I pack up the family, the dog, the camping and fishing gear and the boat.  we're off to monkey mia next week for three weeks. 

As always there is much planning, much shopping and this year a bit more shopping as I inadvertently turned off the deep freeze with about 12 monkey mia meals in it.....  hmmm lost browning points there.... 

One more day of work and then it's holidays.  off to rottnest this weekend purely for a wedding.  no fishing opportunity there unfortunately.

Tuesday we're off to s bend (we leave late to accommodate my daughter's specialty music lesson).  and the Wednesday onto monkey mia.

my wife tells me wind finder says no wind on Thursday  so hopefully boat in the water and tight lines.

now I have mastered photobucket, I will post reports in the comments.

watch this space 

 Hi

Just  super quick report from me. We went for a quick squid bash in the soud on the weekend. Ended up pretty much bagging out within a couple hours. Colour of choice was pink, and orange did OK. I don't know why I ever bother with new brands and colours, I always end up dominating with a pink size 3 yamashita.

Kept these guys for a feed and used a few as bait. Chased a few birds around too for a couple Mack Tuna - big wide spread schools, but the fish were picky, threw heaps of different lures at them and even trolled a few.

Got smoked by something big too! hooks failed and snapped, called for a Mackie. We have gotten into pelagics every time we have launched the boat in the last 6 weeks.

Been spending so much time chasing pelagics and demersals lately - I forgot how fun a good old squid bash can be... and how good a fresh grub of calamari can be!

Alex

Finally fixed the one thing I really hated about the Boston Whaler Conquest 235.....the lack of overhead rod holders (only 3) and the fact they were too low and me and my deckies have hit them with our head several times, resulting in a lot of swearing.

Called a few local boat fab joints but either they did not call back, costs were stupid or they could not do it for ages.....ended up getting an ebay special S/S 7 rod rocket launcher for $280. My expectations were pretty low but when it arrived on my door step 4 days later it was better than expected, but had a dodgy bolted section to join 3 of the holders with the other 4, presumably to make transport cheaper.....

Time to finally learn how to TIG weld (I used to be pretty good on MIG).......result was I managed to stick the two bits of S/S tube together, but I aint giving up my day job anytime soon......angle grinder and buff made a decent end product (too embarrassed to put up any photos....). Plenty of cutting, heart in mouth stuff cutting off these beautiful rod holders, but thoughts of blood dribbling down my forehead eased the pain........

Lots of grinding......

Final fitup.

And hey presto. Less than $340 all up including everything and a days work.

 Fished whitehills last night in very windy conditions. From the outset 5pm the fish were on the chew. Hoping for tailor and mulloway we were surprised when by 7pm we had our bag. Not of tailor or mullas but pinkies. 

A few guys up the beach also got amounst them.

All up we caught 10 with  afew dropped fish right up to 11pm. By then the fish were still there but had become timid.

Tailor were scarce with one caught and afew small soapies in the mix.

The pinks weren't fussy on baits with a mix of mulies, herring, tailor fillets and whole whiting doing the damage.

 Hey fellars being trying to find some sand whiting off of Bunbury in the boat any ideas at what depth to start in ?

Hi All,

Said last week I'd post how we went with our first Rotto trip, so here it is.

Launched at Point Peron at 7.30 on Weds with my mate Mike and we were off for a couple days. Spent the whole day finding ground in the 30's, 40's and 50's between Rocko and Rotto, we found amazing ground with 6-8m flares and no luck. The type of ground we'd expect first drop bag outs off Mandurah or Rocko. Finished the first day with only a small pink, black arse, sargents, scorpions and wrasse, all released. Entered Thompsons safely, beach penned up, had a couple cans, steak sanga at pub, happy. Pingers everywhere!! 

Thurs saw us do our first FADS trip, on the way out we tested ground, another black arse and we shot out deep. Trolled for three hours with no joy. Went back to the last FAD and 20 odd mutton pingers there, kept trying to work mulies and plastics and finally got two hits. First ever Dollies, not huge by any means but went to the island stoked.

Friday morning the weather was awesome.

Tried a repeat trip to the FADS, saw divers taking a couple but we couldn't attract them on lines. Ended up trying for about 5 hrs when we came across a huge school of Dolphinfish jumping and running the surface. We tried to get them for another two hrs, at points we would have up to 8-10 fish swimming less than two meters behind the transom, beautiful to see but so frustrating. Headed off in still awesome conditions

Left there to head back to Pt Peron and found a bit of ground in the 80's for a pink and black.

Couple of fish and a fun trip.

Cheers,

Ben

Hi All

Just a quick report from a trip to Busso a few weeks ago.

Did a bit of drifting around in the bay down Dunsborough with squid jigs out with not much luck. We didnt try to hard there but.

walked out the Busso jetty one nights flicking a Shimano Egixile in the UV White. Caught 8 squid in a couple of hours nothing huge but still a good feed.

While we where on the beach just beside the jetty cleaning them in the shallows i had a little Blue Ring Occy swim between my legs and i seen a pic on facebook of about 8 blue rings in a bucket that someone had caught in the same area.

Went out a couple days later in the boat to the weed patchs straight out from the marina and got a couple more squid there aswell.

Sorry no pics this time.

Cheers Jayce

How has everyone been going lately ? 
Thinking of heading out later today or tomorrow for an arvo / evening session, looking for a feed, has anyone got any tips ? Cheers 

With Cyclone Olwyn bearing down on Perth over the weekend and predictions of heavy rain and wind, all hope for a fishing outing was being "blown out of the window". When I woke on Saturday morning without experiencing any significant indication of rain or wind overnight and Willyweather, BOM and Meteye all indicating improved conditions, it was time to revisit weekend plans.

I called Nick and suggested we convert our Saturday evening barbecue into an evening session on Cockburn Sound. It did not take much convincing and we decided to include the girls in the evening session on the Sound. Previous evening outings in the Sound have resulted in decent Mulloway, Snapper, Shark and other species, and every session was different from the previous one.

We launched from Woodman Point at around 17:00 and followed a squall moving in a South Westerly direction whilst staying just out of reach of the falling rain. Our target was Sulphur Rock - a spot that had provided us with some good fish in the past. This "fish attractor" which is located about 700m east of Garden Island would offer us fair protection from the predicted South Westerly which would turn Westerly as the evening progressed.

We circled Sulphur Rock twice to see where the greatest concentration of fish were and selected a likely piece of ground to anchor over. It did not take long to get the fish on the bite and soon after burleying we started to catch an array of species. We caught butterfish, striped trumpeter, herring, tailor, snoek, pinkies, tarwhine, whiting, skippy, fiddler ray, shovelnose ray and bronze whaler - 12 species in all. Highlights of the evening included a two meter shovelnose that Nick caught and several bronze whalers that the girls caught. The predominant bait was blocks of snook (which were around the boat in plague proportions) attached to a 6/0 or 8/0 circle hook. Even though no large pinkies were caught the girls had a great opportunity to catch a couple of fish and Nick and I were able to quell some of our addiction (to fishing that is).

By midnight the wind had started picking up and had turned to a southerly which made the conditions challenging. The changing conditions sent us back to Woodman Point content with another great outing on our doorstep.

Spent another night down the beach last night chasing a big toothy critter on the slide baits with my brother Aron, mate Ryan and myself all having the heavy setups ready to go.

Set up our gear and out goes 3 grapnels to sit while we prepared our baits. Ryans sinker pulled trying to get the bait out so he had to reset while Aron and myself got ours out, about half an hour wait and my Sambo head gets absolutely hammered!! swing into it to set the hooks and im greeted by a bloody heavy dead weight, stupid black ray im thinking but after a few minutes it woke up and took off with a heap of huge head shakes. Yep this was an ok shark after all. Because there was very little swell it was so hard to tire it out and steer it around the beach, took ages to get it in close and got it up for a few quick photos and the hooks removed. nice 2.3m broinzie and my second in 3 days!! bloody stoked with it and kicking myself its been so long since targeting them again. 

Ended the night with Ryan pullling hooks on a monster right at the shore break that would of gone 3m after a very very hard fight on full drag and some powerful runs.

 after the Cyclone 

had a great long weekend in Albany,The weather was good and the swell down.The sambo was taken off the rocks near shelleys on a big pink plastic by my sons friend.I caught my first jewie drifting of west cape howe on sunday.salmon patchy at best seen a few at shelleys but no big schools yet

I havent been for a decent fish in about a month as ive been way to busy but managed to find the time this arvo to get out and have a crack at an old favorite.

Got to the beach just before dark and sent out my first slide bait on the heavy setup. 15 minutes later it screams off!!! burnt the crap out of my thumb from grabbing the spool on full drag to stop it from making it behind a reef. managed to turn it quick and it fought back and forth in the waves for a while before we where able to grab the leader and beach it. was a nice 2.2m female bronze whaler, awesome start!!
i sat out while the others put their rods out, Mate ryans screams off not long after. bitten off almost straight away above the wire and the slide.

15 minutes later Aron's races off very very fast!! swinging into it to set hooks and it just picked up speed full drag did nothing before quickly pulling hook on what was a huge shark!!

I re rig mine this time and out it slides, another very short wait and my rod starts bobbing, swing into it to set the hook and a huge headshake meets me as i do. good news it not a ray at least haha
quick fight on full drag and a monster of a wobby is up on the beach.

all up i spent 2 1/2 hours down there this arvo for an awesome session and a good way to get back into it and ready for the shark season following the salmon.

 G'Day all

Heading down Busso way over the next weekend and am thinking about taking the little bloke for a scoop in the evening along those beachs out front of the Holy Mile.. I was thinking about staking out some fish frames or sticking some in a bag so the rays don't clean them up and then scoop for crabs if they come in.. That's the plan... now, are there any crabs about or are we wasting our time???  if there are no crabs about I'll leave the scoops and get the little guy on to some herring down Dunsborough way..

Cheers...

Will have kayaks but interested in shore based too. Staying at Coalmine Beach.

Any suggestions? Tackle, locations etc - all thoughts welcome! Keen to do some lure fishing.

Cheers!

Hi All, went for a fish with the Old Man yesterday.

Plan was to drag the lures for hopefully a mackie. Trolled the whole south side of Rotto and around the west end for nothing, fair bit a of weed about made it a bit painfull more so towards the eastern end of the island. Anyways after a couple of hours of this we decided to head back towards the eastern end of the island and find some shallower ground to try and get a feed of KG's or Skippy.

We found a good looking patch on the sounder that was showing fish in about 16m of water. Threw the pick in and dropped the baits in to see what we could rustle up. The old mans rod got touched up and proceeded to pull in a nice KG, not a bad start. We both went on to get a few skippy, wrase and an under size baldie.

Couple of minutes later Dad gets a solid hit and the rod buckles over. In typical style he calls it straight up for a sambo and suggest " this will be rig for sure".

In pretty quick time he had it off the bottom and being so shallow I made the outline of what looked to be a Dhu. Told him to whoa up a bit and take his time only fishing with a #2 bait keeper hook. Got it to the surface and netted a very nice little buck Dhu @ 75cm on the little whitting set up. Not an amazing capture but considering what we were after and the set up being used thought it worthy of a mention. All in all ended up with a pretty good couple of feeds.

Here's a pic of the the Old Man looking pretty pleased with himself.

To all you Aussie girls and Guys who love to rough it, fishing, camping and chillin out without the crowds.
Please go to the link below and sign the petition.

If they take this away from us, it will be a very sad day for our kids.

https://www.change.org/p/hon-ken-baston-mlc-save-the-wilderness-product-of-the-warroora-station-world-heritage-ningaloo-reef-coastline-from-unwanted-developments?utm_campaign=responsive_friend_inviter_chat&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&recruiter=239248116

was fishing east freo during mid week got this pinky on my 2-4kg firewolf and 2500 stradic using 6pd find braid casted out a chunk of squid and was on after 5 minutes it went 47cm it was released straight back after a couple photos my mate also got a nice bream

Went out today on Langa's BW285 beast for a crack at a Spanish mac.......close......sharkie was released. Water just o cold I am afraid, not looking good this year.

Had a quick jig on a shallow wreck, went good on PE4.

Langa got a nice dhu on jig.

I followed with a baldie on jig, not often we get these on jig.

Got a few yellow tail kings as well which was fun, no photos. Weather was not as good as Seabreeze indicated, but heaps better than working......

in plague proportions out on the 40,s behind GI

Until this year have never seen one out there, now they are a bloody pest almost as bad as NW blowies for the way they bite through traces.......they are big too averaging 50cm with some even larger  

Visiting with the fam for a week and not having much luck off beach or jetty. Was going to give Hospital Beach and/or Forrest Beach a go next?

Any tips? Just want to get the kids a few herring or whiting

Pink Snapper YouTube clip with tips - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IckR2ks9x94&feature=player_detailpage

seeing as most of my sessions end in disapointment i dont generally follow up my requests for info with a report, but actually got a new 1st today, nothing to take home but good fun for sure.

bad start to the day had to be in freo by 1130 to meet up with the GF's family, loaded the fishing gear and headed off barely on the road before the battery light comes on, shortly after ABS,  brake warning and SRS all follow along with the electric steering shutting off so quickly spun back and head home, loaded up the work ute and head off again. made it to freo all good and had lunch at the kailis bros, great food id recomend it to anyone who loves their seafood. went for a bit of a work and when i mentioned the spot recomended to me by shimka where we could possibly get some whiting, turns out everyone got over the idea and didnt bring rods and werent particularly interested... not going to let the effort go to waste i convince the GF to just go  ourselves (she opted to stay in the car and read).

got to north port beach bout 2, few ppl swimming along the stretch so head up to the rocks bout 50meters from the beach, put out a mulie and rigged up a smaller rod with prawns and worms. wind was ok, couldnt see any really formed gutters or holes so stuck the mulie out into deeper water just off the rocks a bit. not much happened thort i was getting bites but kept dropping them after a while i got one close and found it was little sandy colourd crabs grabbing my baits. no whiting around so burleyed up for herring. no good either brought in some baitfish but thats in. reloaded the big bait a few times last one just before 4 thinking thisll be the last one. flicked in another prawn when i see the big rod twitch and the drag started to pull slowly. i picked it up and struck and the reel started screaming i set the drag and it didnt even slow down, ran straight out to sea along the rock wall. i got worried as all it had to do was turn and cut me off on the rock so i fought it along the rock wall trying to gain some ground  and get the line clear of the rocks. it was starting to run out of steam but the wieght of it still made pulling it in a mission and it kept alot of pressure on the line. so many thorts as to what it was at the time, no headshakes just constant pressure, eventually got it to the rocks to see a ray, i was a little disapointed when i saw it to be honest but was still good fun to fight. not much i could do on the rocks to i backed the drag off and walked it back to the beach where a some kids had been watching me and we all took some photos and the kids dad helped me release it. while i wish it was something worth taking home it was still a first for me and on a 4000 solstice with 20lb braid and 20lb leader was the heaviest critter ive ever reeled in so im happy. wingspan was about 60cms.

just back from a couple days east of Albany.
zillions of salmon, off the beach and rocks, a few nice skippy.
plenty of salmon schools moving west, big sharks in tow.

Even though the weather was going to be pretty ordinary, Nick and I decided to chance our luck. Up at 04h00 and on the water by 05h15 we made our way across a very sloppy FFB with the brisk easterly at our backs. Our target was our regular spot south of Rotto. When we arrived at the bommie we sounded a number of fish on the Raymarine, but with the waves crashing over the nose of the Cruise Craft we decided that it would not be a good call to hang around. We ventured a further couple of kilometres in a north westerly direction in an effort to hide behind Rotto and explore new water. We eventually found a promising lump in 30m with somewhat better conditions about 5km west of Rotto and dropped the anchor.

After anchoring and setting the burley trail we sat and waited and waited. We had a ripper of a current pushing from south to north which eventually forced us to put a 1oz weight on the normally unweighted trace that we prefer to use. Once we did this we were in the zone and it did not take long to land the first Pinkie for the day. Half an hour later it was an upgrade and soon after that I landed my PB Pinkie - 91cm! Nick managed a further Pinkie and ended his effort on a Bronzie. I had one more run which took me straight into the reef below before we decided to call it a day as the southerly and the rising swell was already starting to make fishing rather challenging.

At 12:00 we started pulling anchor only to find it solidly fixed to the bottom. After 20 minutes of relentless effort I was ready to cut the rope when Nick recommended one last manoeuvre which managed to free the anchor. It took us no less than 90 minutes to get back to Woodman Point as we crossed the white caps at a slow but safe speed.

Even though it was a long way out for a relatively short session, it was still worth the effort.

 With the weather forecast looking good for today, me and a mate decided to do a quick day trip up to Cervantes. Well they got the weather wrong but we persisted anyway. We dropped a mackie boat side just behind the main reef which unfortunately was the only one for the day. Headed out about 10mile and managed 9 dhuies for the day, 2 kept and the rest successfully released. Giving them a deco stop helps them swim back down so well. Only one had to go down on the release weight. Also kept 2 avg size baldies (mid 40cm's), released 2 black ass and 2 sweet lip. Also had a few big bust offs and had a hook straightened by a suspected big dhuie, bugger!

 A couple of mates have accounts here so I thougth I would get my own account. So this is my first post here (First first.)

Halfway through the long weekend up in Lancelin and had the morning out on the water Saturday. Conditions not fantastic early so stayed in close and ran north up the coast trolling some lures past the reefs and along the beach looking for some tailor for no luck. Got up to Dide Bay and the weed was getting bad and it was at that point noticed a some birds working another km out to sea. Decided to head out and conditions were not anywhere near as bad as it looked earlier, and significantly less weed further out. Appeared to be a school of tuna but after chasing them for a while came up with a big zero.

Decided to head back south trolling a couple of lures behind looking for new ground. Didn't venture too far out and was only in around 12m of water when one of the rods took off. Had a mate in the boat and while I was driving, he had a hand full of food so he wasn't jumping in so that left me to grab the rod. We were trolling into the breeze and while it felt like a solid fish, once we put the boat in neutral, the line returned fairly quickly. Wasn't long before some colour was see and to our surprise, up pops a 77cm Pinkie. So another first, a Pinkie on a trolled lure - a pink skirt on a wire trace of all things.

I've only had the new boat since mid last year, so was also the first Pinkie from the boat and a PB for me at the same time. Still reasonably new at offshore fishing.

Went out early on Sunday and conditions were good until my son started feeling average so decided to come and drop him on the beach and head back out. However, as we were coming in the sky took on an angry colour and we decided to pack it in early. Pic below is as we were leaving the beach.

i had a epic 3 day live aboard trip on the diversity Exmouth 38' black watch on my last break.

We didn't get the lures in the water till 11 the first bay but managed a 4-4-3 on blacks 1-1-1 on stripes and 2-1-1 on sails.

The 2nd day got us a grand slam 1-1-1 blues 4-3-3 blacks 2-1-1 on stripes and 1-1-1 on sails. Also got a 35-40kg yellow fin tuna and pulled 6 nice ruby snapper.

We had a early start on the 3rd day and managed 2-2-2 blacks 2-1-1 on stripes before 11:00 but had to head for the marina to make our 3:30 flight back to Perth