Reports

Where are they biting at the moment

FFB - Sunday 14/9

Headed out from Woodies early Sunday (yawn) after clearing the boat of cobwebs and trying to forget about the footy, first stop found a hot whiting bite, heaps of solid fat sandies to 28cm+ ... keeps me in the good books with the war office.

Hit the back edge of the FFB about 8.30am, little slow to start, not much reaction to a solid burley trail other than wrasse, a skippy and a flathead. Pulled the pick, electing to drift given the lack of wind, and was rewarded with a 62cm Dhu to the deckie on a lightly weighted sandy, and 2 of the biggest KGs I have seen, going 50 and 51cm, a Pb for me by a fair way...still stoked.

what's the bet I cant catch a cold next trip...


Last nights Barra effort

I went for a paddle in the Yak at Tinaroo dam last night. My brother Mick went in his as well and we started just on dark and paddled until midnight. Not one strike after the first couple of hours but we weren't too concerned as the wind was dying off and we still hadn't reached the main spot. I could see why Mick wanted to show us this spot as when we got there we spotted a 120cm fish on the surface paddling away slowly without a care in the world. It was a very cool sight and although we spooked that fish Mick soon had a hook up on another. We could see it was a good fish and it ended up measuring 115cm. Nice way to start the tally!

 

 

About 10 minutes later he was on again and a fish in the high 90s was landed. We still hadn't got a hit.

 

After finally getting a strike but losing the fish we headed elsewhere to where Mick snuck off only to see him hook up just when we arrived. The fish was a 110cm specimen and I started to get a bit antsy.

 

I kid you not, after the happy snaps and release he wouldn't of paddled more than 50 metres and got another hook-up! One of the cool things about this fish was Mick thought it wasn't too big but didn't fully realise what was happening in the dark as his Kayak whizzed straight past us at a fair speed. The fish was really pulling the Yak along and towards some timber. He stopped it in time and was pleasantly surprised as his thrid metre plus fish was landed. This one was around the 105cm mark to make it 4 fish from 5 strikes to our one solitary hit.

 

From there things picked up thanks to a tip or two from Mick and we managed a few more strikes. On the 5th strike we had a hook-up and a metre plus slice of Chrome went airborne only metres from the Yak. It was a great fight and at one stage came under the Kayak and belted the bottom with a couple of big head and tail slaps to remind us of the power these things can have. I reckon it was around the 107cm mark to round of a very successful trip. Unfortunately there were no more chances for Aron to score a fish as well. A good excuse to come for another crack mate and score a metre specimen!

Final tally was around the dozen hits between us for 5 fish so not a bad conversion rate and all quality fish.

I'm loving the shots of Mick trying to get his lures back. The fishing might have been a bit slow but when they did take they certainly inhaled the lures!!

 

 

 

 


mullet fishing with lures

 Went to port fairy (SW vic) on the weekend, and straight away found some hungry salmon eating our plastics most casts. They were small but fun on 4lb. After playing around with them, we moved up to a jetty at the mouth. After burleying, I sent out some pillie fillets, and was hooking mullet every cast. After i got bored of that, I cast around micro jigs and 6" worm plastics. The mullet, salmon and pike were chasing the lures to the surface and smashing them there. I kept 4 mullet for bait. Oh, and the smallest mullet went 35cm, the biggest very close to 40.

Tim


I want my lure back

 Some good shots of my brother trying to get his prized lure back from the depths of a couple of fish. Full report to follow.


More Busso Pinks

 Had another good day out from busso. Weather wasn't as nice as predicted.

 

Got out Sunday and landed a couple of nice pinks and a little dhu (600mm) to take home. Plenty of pink reports down this way and they are still hanging around in good numbers.

Frames donated to fisheries.


Pinkies over the weekend

 had 3 good nights for 13 fish from 750-920mm in the sound. released most. Shark turned up on Friday night


where's the squid???

Most fishing reports have been saying plenty of Squid in Cockburn Sound, week in week out.

I was out friday along G I and the southern flats , for a total of 6.

And Sunday i was at the North end of G I, working my way back south for a total of 4.

Both were nice days on the water however, and between the 2 days plenty for a nice feed :)

Any one else having any luck?

Is the water just a bit to dirty still?

 


Augusta Boys trip

Spent the weekend down south with a few of the boys, with the plan to do a little 4WDing, some drinking and hopefully get out for a fish if the weather allowed.

We stayed at Hamelin bay caravan park, but really didn't think it would be possible to launch the boat there this time of year, and we were right with the water being so low would have pretty much had to put the trailer and car onto the sand. So it was to Augusta to launch and try out from there.

I've not fished Augusta from a boat before so was all new to me. Saturday looked good on the weather front, except a 3.5m swell but none the less we gave it a run. First idea was to try head out about 11 mile to some ground I could see on the GPS. out we went at about 18 knots and the further we got the bigger the swell got. Once we got out there had a bit of a sound around and a drop or two. The ground was covered in bait but nothing more.

It didn't take long for a couple of the boys to start to feel average and with the depth changing by 7.5m from top to bottom of the swell, decision was made to head back in closer.

Turned out to be an awesome decision, with about 4 hours of just hot fishing in only 10m of water!

It was back to basics fishing, small bean sinker and an 8'o hook with a pinned Mulie or Californian squid and just drift baiting in the current. Pictures below show you don't need to make fishing complicated.

First drop and here s the result.

Yellow tail king fish!! probably 6-8 kilo. The main reason we were fishing single 8'o and bean sinker was for this purpose, I thought the ground we were fishing looked very YTK type ground. The rod you can see in the back ground that Scano is on, ended up being a double header of YTK's about the same size.

After this is was literally fish every drop and the variety and size was a big surprise. we ended up with 7 or 8 YTK's from 6-10 kilo and countless lost, 1 legal Dhu (in 10m of water!) a nice Harlequin, 2 big 55-60cm flatties, 4 Pinky's, and a number of Sambo's in the range of 7-12 kilo. Countless unstoppable's as well. Many fish busted us up in the reefs, bloody funny to watch!

And then there was this on the last drop of the day. This one hurt, probably 20 minute fight in 10 meters of water.

Palming the spool on the Saltiga

Biggest sambo to date I've caught, guess on size?

Ended up being a cracker of a weekend away with the boys, the fish just a bonus.

Bodie


Tagged dhu recapture

 Went out Saturday morning in our local fishing comp Picked a few underside Dhuies up and a few kgs . Also got my first recapture of a tagged Dhuie was only 38 cm yet to find out the old details yet had a fair bit of growth on the tag so might have been a while since it was tagged have to check my records when my bro gets back from exmouth


Sunday fishing

 Headed out from Two Rocks with Abledog ,Mj and Erikl. We head out to the 8mile mark for our fisst drop  not alot was happening .on to the next spot 10 mile and a few fish were home Mj droping a large fish we think maybe Sambo,And Abledog got a nice swollowtail.Picked a a few small dhuies and some shit fish .Next couple of spots we a little quiet with only a few smal dhuies ,then Erik got his PB baldie He was having a great day on the fish.Come lunch time and we anchored up and cooked up a great fish lunch with potato and macaroni salad .After lunch we tryed a few other places with the small dhuies still following us .The last spot of the day gave us another 5 dhuies The days total.19 dhuies  nothing over 5kg2 baldies 1 swollowtail 1 sambo three BB and a heap of shit fish


Canning and swan river system

 Today went for a long kayak. Firstly stopped at some snaggy looking country in about 1.5 meters of water. Caught some monster yellowtail grunter some went 35cm! Caught 3 of em. Then went on to some hidden away even snaggeir country in the canning river and caught a nice 29cm bream and also had constant bites. At this point we had dismounted the kayak.

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Slam'n Salm'n

Yep, it's that time of the year!

I had a nice hit around dusk but the hooks couldn't find something to set into.

Another 30min later, Richard's friend hooked a nice one...gave a good fight...but the hooked fell out.

Then it was Richard's turn...2 fish on 6 casts...cookie cutter males.





Not to be outdone, I redeemed myself another 20min later...chunky female.



We fished for another 30min and decided to call it a night at 9:30pm.

By the condition of the fish, this is just the first wave. Hopefully the peak will last 2-3 weeks. :D


throwing lures around hilaries

dont know if this should be in the report section but here i go. had a few hours to kill out at hillaries so decided to have a go at a lure only fishing trip (LB), to date aside from a few herring on a 5g halco twisty and a bony herring of a jetty on a laserpro45 is all ive managed on lures but i was keen to give it a go.  got to the rockwall near spinnakers and the lighthouse around 330pm and wandered along having a quick chat to some fishers already there. few small fish caught along the rockwall nearer the beach and i witnessed a guy bring up a well sized tarwhine from the fishing platform, everyone was using prawns from what i saw.

had my 2-4kg spin rod and a selection of smaller hardbodies, some soft plastics and a squid jig. i flicked out a mcarthur pearl minnow plastic for a while trying different retrieves and varied depth as much as could around the rockwalls on the outside and in for a while with no hits. kept it up for 30mins with no bites i got out the squid jig as it was calm on the inside so i flicked that around trying to recreate and practice the technique i saw on youtube, still no luck moving up and down the wallk and then onto the outside wall again. i swapped again and threw the laserpro45 around on the outside varying retrieves and pauses along the wall untill the platform. nothin...

so all in all a fairly unsuccessfull trip, practiced working lures a bit so not a complete waste and it was a relaxing way to spend the arvo, figured id at least post a report and mabye some of the more experienced guys could tell me if i did anything wrong or mabye the fish just werent on the bite or in the area.

cheers for reading

Niko


Making fish look bigger!!

 Get your 4 year old to hold them up for the photo's

Had a nice day out yesterday off Mandurah. No Dhus but got a nice Queen snapper, Pinkie and a ripper KG. Also got busted off around a cray pot by a suspected Sambo on a jig. Dropped another good fish on the jigs too.

Chris.


Shark Bay / Useless Loop

 Going up to Shark Bay Useless Loop around the Salt works to attend a ship this weekend.

Anyone fished around this area or know how hard it will be to get from there to steep point?

Ill have a rental 4WD

Only taking a 6-8kg setup to throw lures for tailor or what ever is lurking. 


Preston Beach

 Heading down to house sit for my cousin this weekend. Anyone know if the tailor are about or anything else worth targetting from the beach?


Reef fishing

 Here's some recent fish taken on shallow 7m reefs off my local breakwater. I've been dropping Lures and baits over these reefs and got a mixed bag. The wrasse have really taken to bream lures up to 3" and are a good fight on light gear.

 


Red emperor on fly

Check this out

Link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Ppmu53dRc

Cheers

Stevo


Friday Night Garden Island

Just a quick note on our trip out Friday evening, deckie got to the ramp around 7.00 and the boat was ready to go. Nice flat trip out, and pulled up on some interesting ground on the sounder. Not much happening other than the normal pests, so moved 50m over on to a nice lump. Sounder was lighting up nicely, but again we were getting hammered by the pests. I decided to have a quick leak over the side, and at that exact moment off goes my reel. Quick stop mid stream, hasty exchange of rods, and reeled in the best pinkie of the night, but only around 40cm. Healthy looking fish, hopefully I can meet him again next year. The only keeper for the night was a nice tailor that took half a scalie off the bottom.

Decky caught about 20 snook, he couldn't get past the buggers. Last drop of the night had my heavy gear nicely loaded up, but couldn't manage to stop it. It didn't feel like a ray normally does, but in reality it most likely was. Had pictures of sharks & big sambos running through my head. Still, good to put a bend in the rod, and good to know my knots held up. Eventually the braid snapped which was dissapointing, supposed to be 40lb but I wasn't really trying to put any hurt on it.

Wind started to come up a bit around 10, so headed back to the ramp not long after.

Sorry no pics of massive snappers or dhuies, maybe one day.

Cheers,

BD.


Port Gregory

Finally got up to Port Gregory for a fish last weekend. Just 2 of us with a 5.4M Quintrex which turned out to be a very easy beach launch. We stayed in one of the cabins at the caravan park which was perfect.
This fishing definitely matched expectations with Dhufish, baldchin groper, pink snapper, red throat, loads of coral trout, Samson fish, skippy, various norwest snapper and a surprise yellowtail kingfish ( well ok, half a kingfish). 95% of fish caught on jigs and soft plastics. Great spot if the weather is good.


Chase your Dream !!! Chase after Mama Toman !! Massive Toman 8KG- BKKGUY


When I'm not guidng fishing trip, I will be chasing after mama toman (giant snakehead).
From late july to late Oct is the annual rainings season in Thailand.
Which also mean, mating and the fries seasons for toman in Thailand.

Chasing after the mama toman in Thailand, require abit of tactics knowledges and skills.
With my years of experience , I kind of love the chaisng game.


Here the highlights of my recent mama toman & vid clip.

Watch all the actions packed fights video secene at my youtube channel.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCk1em3mZrM


Highlight catch photos for your viewing pleasure....

Massive 8KG mama toman.


 

What a beauty !!!


 

 

 

 


Jumbo squid = dhuie

 A plan was hatched to go for a fish on Thursday night with my cousin behind the islands for snapper so on my lunch break went to woodies to catch some squid for bait it was pretty windy to the north east so I used the available wind to put my jig in a place I wouldn't normally put it and resulted in a 35 cm tube squid I managed only one more small one before I had to get back to work. Went out on the boat that evening and converted the squid into a 502mm and 640 dhuie was a good night on the water. Did the same thing on Friday only rays and sharks no snapper were encountered on either night


GOMOKU crazy

 So I was lucky to get out on Tuesday morning for a solo sesh b4 this weather set in, hit the FFB out from Dawesvile nice n early, set anchor on a favourite spot and got some burley running and some plastics in the water about an hour b4 sunrise. Straight up I was onto a couple of small Dhuies, both around the 40cm mark. 

Kept the burley running and like clockwork when the sun hit the horizon started getting a few marks on the sounder then nailed a couple of snapper within 10mins of each other. 

With a couple of good fish in the esky I pulled the anchor and headed back into the groynes at the entrance of the cut, hopeing to get a Tailor or Salmon on some new Doctor Hook School bully's I recently got. After casting around the groynes for half an hour I hooked up big time onto an unexpected bonito that was great sport on light gear. 


Quick session yesterday

 Went out yesterday from Mindarie around 11am for a fish and found really nice conditions with the eaterly bowing the swell down to less than a metre. Sounded around a bit to the north of where I normally fish and couldn't find much except something that kept biting the tails off the plastics. The nor'wester started to blow a bit so I headed in closer.

Anchored up near where I normally fish and only managed a wrasse. Moved over 50 metres to where my mark was and almost straight away was rewarded with a nice Dhu of about 70cms. This fish hugged the bottom to start with and everytime I got it closer to the top it took me back to the bottom again with strong runs. This is the most lively Dhu I've caught in shallow water. After a terrible phone photo it was returned to water and swam away strong. It took a small squid head bait and I barely even felt the bite. 

With that excitement done I started to fish with some scalies and they were getting chomped pretty consistently. I ended up using whole scalie with a flap butterflied to give it some action and it wasn't long before I caught my first ever Sambo. I've been trying to find them and haven't found a showing on the sounder to indicate them like I see others posting. Turns out this one found me. It was only small at 55cms but gave a good account of itself. Again, it was returned healthy to the water. 

After that I decided to try my brand new jig. This is the first flutter jig I've bought and I have to admit I was a bit excited to try it - rigged it up with a nice assist got it all tied on and first drop to the bottom - bricked on terra firma!!! Maybe next time.

 


Day saved by mr salmon

So I've been venturing out a big lately in my new tub, just sounding for some lumps and chasing some of these elusive Cockburn snapper that I keep hearing about, Me and a mate decided to get up at sparrows yesterday and head out to some lil lumps I've found, Most of the morning turned up one rat snapper and a lonely herring and the easterly was starting to really howl Making it increasing difficult to anchor on the lumps. i made the call to go and catch some squid an try and save face, well at least they were there! We got twelve pretty quick with blues and pinks doing the most damage. With the wind not really dieing off yet ,The call was made to head in Heading back to woodman point boat ramp, we came accross two boats hooked up, i stopped and watched for a bit before dropping a deep diver in and sounded around the general area, once I seen the school on the sounder I knew the day was saved, my deckie has never caught or seen these missiles school up before so he was first up, once he hooked up I dropped my light gear down and soon had my 2-4kg gear screaming in protest. this lasted for around 1 1/2 hours and it was just pure mayhem! At one point we had salmon busting up 50metres on each side of the boat! Hitting everything and anything! ive never seen a more fired up school in my many years of salmon hunting down south. And to have this in September in metro waters less than a km from the ramp .


Pt Peron

 good mix last weekend


New Jersey Inshore Fun 2014

I wasn't able to visit San Diego for some hot tuna and yellowtail action during this El Nino. This is as close as I can get to that action without paying for a charter to chase tuna on the Atlantic coast. Perhaps the El Nino also affected the fishing off New Jersey. Water has been warm and the August bonito fishing had been phenomenal (relatively speaking...but not on my day of fishing). I hope the hot trend continues and the Little Tunny fishing will turn on in September.

Full story here:

http://muskiebaitadventures.blogspot.ca/2014/08/2014-new-jersey-inshore-fun-day-1.html

http://muskiebaitadventures.blogspot.ca/2014/08/2014-new-jersey-inshore-fun-day-2.html

http://muskiebaitadventures.blogspot.ca/2014/08/2014-new-jersey-inshore-fun-day-3.html

I caught 7 new species on the trip, bringing my total to #410!  :D

Brook Silverside (Labidesthes sicculus) - Species #404



Striped Searobin (Prionotus evolans) - Species #405



Atlantic Bonito (Sarda sarda) - Species #406





Banded Rudderfish (Seriola zonata) - Species #407



Northern Searobin (Prionotus carolinus) - Species #408



Altantic Chub Mackerel (Scomber colias) - Species #409



Northern Kingcroaker (Menticirrhus saxatilis) - Species #410


Cockburn Pinkies

Just wondering if anyone been getting pinks in the sound yet. Got this one (90cm, 8.5kg) the other night right outside in 20m.He looked really pissed off! Suppose I would be too. Should be getting them in the sound soon...



Pinkies by the dozen

Mate Nic and I decided to have a mid-week fish despite the 3.5m swell that was pushing through. We launched from Woodman Point just after first light and whilst making our way across the Sound we already encountered some fairly large swells. By the time we arrived between Garden and Carnac Islands the swell was breaking all over the place and I was contemplating returning to the jetty. We eventually got through the islands but Five Fathom was white with breaking waves. We decided to eliminate the risk and travelled parallel to FFB to about 5km before Rottnest where we found a safe passage through. From here a further 30 minutes and we were on our favourite bommie.

Not long after dropping anchor and setting up a burley trail we started catching Pinkies one-after-another and at times with double hook-ups. We managed a couple of smallish Sambos and both got smashed a couple of times on light gear. When the bites eventually slowed down we decided to do a drift with the sea anchor deployed and I managed to catch my largest Dhufish to date - a specimen of 79cm. Still a long way to go to the magical 100cm, but this goal is in my sights now that we are gaining a better understanding of these magnificent waters.

All in all another wonderful opportunity on the waters of Western Australia (and a great feed too).

YouTube - http://youtu.be/iVEk5V9VoD8

Story - http://fisheagle.homestead.com/Outings2014/PinkiesAugust2014/Pinkies.html