Pulled hooks on two before bagging this pair tonight.

New assassin Beachmaster Zero, 50lb grinder braid and fresh mullet from Shore Catch

Well the weather this year looked atrocious worst in at least 5 years for our annual trip. Wind Wind..followed with 3-4m swells for the entire time. But...we made do in the 7 days we were there. North passage it was for every trip out.
We had about 3 days out there, with a terrible half day. Considering we did.....ok...
Days we couldn't get out, we spent collected big occys from exposed reefs and eating the local pastries, followed by lots of drinking beer and wine. (not necessarily in that order)

No massive reds (10+kg) this year (4-8kg), but found some awesome untouched ground in 100m that held your normal offenders in numbers....Out deep we did our normal annual efforts of bagging out on massive greyband and some average sized rubies, which always a specticle at filleting table. Biggest GB went 26.5kg. 

We did notice, due to what i suspect caused by large swells, a clear colour change in about 80-90m (~15km out), and would explain why it was hard to tempt stuff below these depths. Normal for us to find big reds in 60m and loads of fish. Each mark this year was very....short on life to say these least, until you sucked it up and headed out into those ugly winds and chop past that colour change. 

Sharks were normal, nothing over the top on most of our spots maybe lost half a dozen fish in the days we went out. Until we tried trolling that regular visited place at the back of the reef. Those things are smarter each year. Managed to get 1 of 2 10kg+ mack under the boat before we gave up, the other lasted 2 secs on the lure before it was blasted by big whalers. Better weather and would have liked to have gone North or South of entrances, so no macks were landed this year. 

A fun video we made from occying. youtu.be/GSNI4T3bdxw
Context: I'm trying to pluck one from a hole and your mate just picks a big one off rocks with bare hands. 

I'll upload some awesome drone footage from the shoreline at a later date, when i have a free wifi connection someplace. (Follow the my youtube channel for updates)

 A couple of undersize snapps put back but good a good feed of sandies and a KGW with my young bloke this afternoon. More than enough for us, we left them bitting. So nice to get back on the water 

 All done and dusted for another year. Just finishing up the cleanup after getting home late Sunday. Weather was mostly good, after missing a lot of the first 5 days due to a passing front. Fish had been good prior to our arrival, and were still around for a while, then, bang, one day the water went cold and green, just like it was in Kalbarri all summer, and the pelagics fled.  Really hard going for a while; we actually went four days without losing a lure, as there were f*all fish to take them and then to be taken by sharks. We managed a feed of demersals by working hard at it, but the billfish, Wahoo, Spaniards and even the bloody YFT were gone.Nothing left but ocean cockroaches, AKA Stripeys.

This year was going to see a big effort on the bills out wider--our very first foray , and only a brief one, saw us 2 from three on nice little blacks. way to christen the new rig, which had only had a total of three trips out of home before it was loaded up for the trip north.

Sails were about at first, but we weren't adapting very well to using outriggers for the first time--we usedto run straight off the rod tip, and free spool the monent one turned up. We worked it out in the end, and had a best day of four released, but lost a hell of a lot more than we landed--bill-wrapped leader ( 80lb and 120lb) bustoffs were especially common, but we were using exactly the same gear as previous years when it wasn't really an issue, so ??? We even hooked one on an X-Rap 20, and got it nearly to the boat.

Wahoo seemed to be around in better numbers than previously, apart from the cold, green episode, our best day was 3 and we weren't even targeting them, bycatch to sails, mostly.

Spaniards were about at first, then went quiet, but there were some good fish among them.

The sharks got what was probably the best one--the head and shoulders that were left covered the bottom of a full-sized fish bin

we managed the usual quality demersals, but not as many as last year, sharks make it very hard, and you just give up rather than feed them quality fish.

There were a few of the smelly, bitey buggers around this year--no, not sharks, big barracuda.

This lure had the unparellelled distinction of surviving nearly the whole trip, and ended up looking a lot worse than it does in this pic--it accounted for
5 wahoo, three YFT, 2 spaniards, plus a sharked YFT and spaniard--then was snipped off by a 'hoo where the line cut the water, late in the trip.

Lots of beautiful evenings, sundowners on the beach

Been a bit slack with this years report from May but will give overview;

- weather was up their with the best! fished 7 of 9 days, could have been 8 but were too rooted!

- water temp plus 27oC!! past experience told us this isnt good

- got just under 20kg each but had to work as hard as ever for them

- no great stress though as better than sitting on shore

- sharks were not too much of problem, maybe lost 6 fish all trip

- fished anywhere from 60m to 200m, from well south, to well north

- had the new HDS Carbon fitted for the trip with 1kW transducer

- worked well but to be honest up to 100m didnt show much different (albeit greater clarity) than my 10yo Navman 4500

- reds were hard to find, only 6 whole trip and normally would average that per day

- caught a nice sail in 60m on bottom rig 

- few squid thrown in 

- all in all beer was cold, caught some fish, had the pleasure of seeing Helen (who contrary to what she says was misbehaving badly!) and had a great trip! 

 Any reports of the snapper being caught in the sound yet? Starting to come to that time of year!!

Hit the water late today after seeing that today was probably the only one with "good enough" conditions for the next week. Launched at gentlemens  hours from the club and shot across the Sound in near perfect conditions but as I reached the channel I quickly saw that the swell was much bigger than forecast with one set almost closing out the channel. Choosing a wider approach got through with no trouble and headed out to the high 40's where I have been doing well of late. 48 metres was biteless but I had noted some good fish shows in the low 40's so headed back in to that area.....yup still there!

Dropped three baits and hooked up almost immediately, the head shakes and surging runs were typical of good snapper but within moments of hook up the runs stopped to be replaced by the screaming run of a shark which surfaced quickly exploding on the surface before breaking me off on the sea anchor. Second rid goes off, same result, they were just taking a bit of the fish they were swallowing whole.  Two to the tax man

rerigged .....two more hook ups and two more donations ......stuff wasting good snapper, gave it away and came home fishless. Now I have NEVER lost a fish to a shark in the metro area before but four fish in less than an hour is ridiculous........can we now expect this to be the norm?

Recently myself and my brother have teamed up with Daiwa and we got a heap of new reels for us to use off the rocks. Pretty excited to use them this is the mayhem that happened on their first outing and my Dogfight 8000 certainly got christened with a monster of a fish!

The plan for the day was to film a bit of slide baiting for sambos and King’s and a video we are making on it about chasing them off the rocks. My mrs also came with and she has been wanting to land a good fish for a while now and after her last outing loosing 2 good dhufish and a big sambo off the rocks in one session she was out to redeem herself. We set up my Maven with the Dogfight on it, 200lb leader and 100lb braid. Out goes the first herring and it was her turn first when it went off. Short wait and the rod is screaming in the rod holder. She gets to it and I’ve tightened the drag until I though there was enough and the rod was pretty loaded. Straight into the reef and busted off pe10. Far out that was a big fish!!

Another live herring was sent out after a quick re rig on the same gear but this time a much longer wait. The rod screamed off again and I’ve ran to it and tightened the drag until I was starting to get pulled off my feet and this fish didn’t slow down and ran very fast to my right before a big set has smashed my line and got it tangled onto a bommie about 10m from me. I backed off the drag and let this fish drag 100 odd meters of line through the reef while seeing my line tangled on weed on top of a rock. For 15 minutes I went back and forth with the fish taking line and me slowing and gently pulling this fish back through my line tangled on the rocks. Eventually it came free and I’ve raced to wind up all the slack line. Thinking I had lost it I’ve finally came tight again but the fish was a long long way to my left almost back in front of where I originally hooked it. I’ve put a lot of pressure back on and up popped a huge sambo! Bit of forced direction changes and I had the fish ready to wash into a crack and try leader it up. As the fish came around a large wave has lifted the fish and cut my slide leader off on a barnacle. The fish got picked up and slammed into the crack I was planning on landing it in but no longer connected to anything. I’ve freaked out and grabbed the gaff and somehow managed to get to it before another wave came. Feeling pretty bad about having to gaff the fish to get it up when I wanted to release it, but after the fight and getting trashed on the rocks it was in bad shape anyway. I decided that even though it was a shame to have to keep it I couldn’t let it go to waste so I’ve cut the fillets off and I ended up carrying them out on the hour walk to the car. It made for a painful walk back but it will be eaten, used as bait and burley so it won’t be wasted. This fish is my my second best landbased and made my 105cm Brag Matt look tiny, had to be 30-33kg and what a fish to christen the brand new Dogfight on its first outing!!

Hi all,

Belated report, as I did this early May, but thought I would post in case others considering similar.

I booked a 3 day charter with Whitey on Evolution Fishing Charters to the Abrolhos. He leaves from Kalbarri, and fishes mainly the northern groups, and the advantage of him over others is that it is what I would call a "luxury boat" with only 4 customers on board. You leave early on one day, travel and fish that day, then full day next, then fish and return about 3pm the next day.

I fell in love with Kalbarri - beautiful place I hadn't visited for a bit, and brought the family up for a holiday the next week. Accomodation was cheap too, and good food and family activities.

Anyway the fishing. The truth is was it blew 20 plus knots most of the time. However we landed about 160+ quality fish between the 4 of us in 3 days. The skipper was on the ball (and the decky) and if it got quiet we moved. The negative is we couldn't do much jigging or deep drop due to the wind.

We caught red emperor, coral trout, baldies galore, dhufish, snapper and other emperor, with little interference from sharks, plus a few amberjack, sambos and a few tuna (no mackeral). 

Even at mooring we landed 60 cm fish on the herring gear - good giggles. Meals were great, and as the customers were me, my father in law, best mate and his dad - we had a blast. Mate's dad had never caught a decent boat fish so lots of bucket lists ticked off for him. Leather couches to snooze on in transit and comfy bunk beds and a shower made it comfortable.

We had plenty of fillets to keep, but realeased the majority of fish. It was a super experience, which could only be improved if the wind was lower, but that is always our problem , and we still caught fish. 

The boat is a 15.6m luxury game fishing boat - and they are equipped with high quality gear - top shelf trolling gear, and reels were Penn Slammer IIIs I think which were actually great. No need to bring a thing - all jigs/ plastics provided too which is nice, but sadly we didn't get to use them as much as we could have.

Price was about $1800 or so each I think.

Few pics attached. 

Hey guys,

Just got back from an awesome trip upto Tamala Station. Had to pull the kids out of school on the Tuesday arvo to get a spot at Shell Beach, Tamala.

We left Mandurah at around 2:30am Wednesday and started setting up camp at 2pm Wed. 

Got out fishing on our first day at the leisurely time of 10 am. Was a bit quiet at our first spot, so decided to head towards Salutation Island, on the way over our sounder flashed red. A quick U turn had the sounder lit up red. I didn't even get a chance to get a line in the water, as Scott and Mum were hooked up solid straight away. Jade got some action video and I was either baiting hooks, taking Snapper off or netting another Snapper. Great fun, we had our limit of 6 Pinkies (No license for Jade) in about 45 min. 

The next day was a carbon copy. Except for the Dolphins. They go to any boats fishing, and wait for any undersize fish (Pinky's) as soon as you have unhooked them, they wait until you throw them over and get an easy feed. I even tried slipping them quietly in, but they were onto it. Saying that we didn't lose one fish to sharks. Which at the moment is unpresendented(spelling) Only got 3 sized Snapper that day. My boy, Scott, blamed it on the bloody Dolphins. His sister, Jade was pretty chuffed though and got some cool video's of them.

Our Third day got Scott his biggest snapper to date. It went 720mm. It didn't seem too big to start with, but then sent him on a merry dance around the boat. Jade also decided to have a crack. I hooked her up and she managed the fish above. We got a heap of Pinky's but nothing else (not complaining) but would love to get a few Blue Bone, seen heaps of undersize ones.

Just a p.s. We recently lost our beautiful Red Heeler Yani, 

We got this little dude 2 weeks before heading up there. Meet Rusty, he had a ball. 

 Just got back from my 3 week swing from Cone bay and got the chance to fish with someone from the fishing club I am in. HARD to find deckies midweek for a fish. Fish were slow to come onto the chew to start with but as that sun got lower to the water and the tids turned fish started coming into the boat. Landed the first trout for his boat and the first just legal red emperor. Got a good bag of decent blueline too. 

Arriving back in Perth on Friday night after a couple of days on site I decided to check whether there was a slight chance for good weather during the weekend.  To my "shock" Saturday was showing up as a relatively good day with a small swell and mild winds.  I say "shock" as for most of this year the weather has been downright awful during the weekends - the only time that we have to get out on the water.  Knowing that my preparation for an outing takes at least three hours, Gail and I made a call to launch sometime during the late morning on Saturday.  Willyweather also indicated that the wind would be dropping off toward the afternoon.

The next morning it did not take too long to set up the fishing gear, tie traces, check the boat, set-up the GoPros, refuel and buy bait.  After all the necessary pre-work we made our way to Woodman Point and by 11:00 were on the water heading off to Rotto.  It took about an hour to get to our favourite area and after confirming some serious arcs on the Raymarine we dropped the pick.  It was only after I dropped the anchor that I realised that there was a substantial current pushing through, so much so that the marine exclusion zone marker in the distance was leaning over to a point of being almost horizontal to the water.  This did not put us off as we had caught some good fish in these conditions in the past.  My understanding of these conditions is that the smaller fish find it difficult to hang around in the heavier current and therefore the bigger fish are more available - my theory anyway.

We introduced generous amounts of burley into the swim and after an hour Gail landed the first fish of the day - a small shark which was not really on our target list.  Half an hour later I landed a snapper of 71cm and as I was fighting the fish Gail hooked into the second snapper which ended up measuring 76cm.  For the next two and a half hours we landed a further two sharks (one of about 1.5m), Gail a good pinkie of 81cm and my top fish of the day - a YTK stretching the tape to 107cm.  During this time we were reefed no less than five times by what I believe were larger YTKs.  I introduced the heavier gear (50lb mono) which did not even get a glance.  Goes to show that lighter gear gets the better hook ups most of the time.  By 16:00 we decided to call it a day as we made our way back before we lost the light for the day.

The highlight of the day for Gail and I was seeing whales breaching and even having one pop up close to the boat to say hello.  Another day in Perth Paradise.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/dcfwKsgUhQI

 Heading up Ningaloo on Friday just wondering if anyone has been their in the last couple of months and have any reports of the sharks and what they are like at the moment, Only have 3 weeks this time so I wanna try get some fish without the tax man taking half of it! 

 Thought i put this up as its pretty much up there with best sesh have had. After not catching much in Perth for a while decided to head up north for few days with the mrs in search for a nice gutter to sit at an soak some baits and hopefully pull a mulla out of. Arrived at the beach an checked up an down for over an hour  till found nice spot to setup. First cast on the small gear an mrs was pulling in dart straight up for half hour then the bites stoped for a bit an the big baits started gettin hit an tailor were round. Pulled in a bag of them  up untill the  sun started setting then the mullaz were out. Virtually dead on the sun touching the  water first big rod went of after after few minute fight come up one bout a metre long. After few photos an putting back i set rod up again just put in rod holder it goes of  mrs turn an she pulls in another smaller model tgis time. Next 20 minutes was few bites and runs but all missing the hooks till rod buckled over an set the hooks after a 10 minute fight i pulled one at  1.2m long.The next 45 minutes we were geting bites but no runs an pulled in a few wobbygons. Mrs decided to go bed an not even 10 minutes after reel started screaming an hooked on for bout a minute till leader broke. As i just reset that rod out my other one goes of after yelling out to the mrs so  she could pull in it but was fast asleep i had 15 minute fight up comes one at 1.3m after few photos an couple minutes of trying to get it to swim of it went of well. Fished for bout  30 mins an  the pickers were out so decide call it a night an get up early an that resulted in 2 more mullaz bout the 70cm mark. All mullaz were realeased to catch another day.

Scored some epic weather back in late April for our annual Abrolhos trip. We normally launch at Gregory and stay at Wallabi group but this trip left from Gero with the plan of exploring/ fishing Palsaert, Easter and hopefully getting back up to Wallabi weather permitting. With the weather being so good it wasnt a problem and we ended up going around the Western side of Palsaert up through Easter before doing a full lap of Wallabi and heading back to Gero. Spent two nights on the pick at Morley Island anchorage which is awesome and were offered a mooring in the lagoon at Pigeon for our night up at Wallabi. We carry 670L under the floor and had 93L left when we arrived back at the ramp at Gero. Travelled 218nm in total averaging about 2.65L/nm for the trip. 

Fishing was good without being unbeleivable and we almost managed our 10kg each of Dhufish, Trout, Spangles and Baldies. Besides one small Tuna couldnt get amongst the pelagics despite coming across heaps of bait and birds. Lost a lot of good fish to sharks too, especially at Palsaert group. 

I installed a new 300AH House Battery system with 150w Solar panel and a 40A DCDC charger to look after the fridge and freezer before we left and the setup worked sweet. Cleaned and Vac-Sealed our fillets down each arvo with the inverter and straight into the feeezer. 

Had the standard visit from Fisheries with an officer jumping on board one day and having a good look through the fridge. He was happy and just reminded us of the 300mm minimum fillet size which he reckons is where most blokes are getting caught out. 

Cheers to Rob H for the anchorage advice around the southern groups!

 Quick run to the Abrolhos & tdove then home via dongara few trout and few baldies boys got their 10kg each and off we went. Back down south for a few puka with the good weather coming tomorrow

Went out early this morning on a mates boat and as he lives in Port Kennedy we decided to launch from that ramp. Really surgey with a 3 metre swell running, went past the sisters whilst still dark and headed out wide, well we had little choice as it is just flat sand for miles and miles after crossing FFB .....around 18nm out in a little over 40 metres we got hammered with large skippy, moving out another couple of miles we still struggled to find decent ground eventually finding some rubble strewn bottom.  First drift four under sized snapper all around 48cm, moving slightly further offshore these two hit within minutes, nothing more indeed bites were hard to come by still with a brace of good snapper we had nothing really to complain about. 

 Guys who have been on the forum for more than 4 years will remember Daz (DazSamFishing). He left to Brizvegas 4 years ago, but he is back and came out for a few beers and a pinckie fish. Had a great time last night and got into some fish. Only got one photo and it was shiiit......anyhoo.

Welcome back mate!

 Hey fellas,

Caught 4 consecutive double headers and countless singles. About 12m of water not far from hillarys. I know theyre not uncommon and are often found in the marina. They were harder to avoid than wrasse.

Obviously I put them all back, where do all the big ones go? And whats the growth rate on these?

Cheers

 Managed a morning trip yesterday with Mick. Hit the greys early and we got 8. Lost almost 30. Amazing stuff and frustrating. Many lost plus the sharks smashed us. Some pretty cool takes with Macks skimming across the surface trying the get them in as quick as possible only to see a big shark smash them. Kind of like supercharged GT fishing. We then punted out to get a Nanny. Got 23 in the first 20 minutes. Mick made us stop and leave them biting to go elsewhere. Ended up with more and a total of 49 fish by midday.

Headed out from Woodies this morning at sparrows avoiding two boats with no running or Nav lights .....come on fellas you are invisible particularly with bright coastal lighting killing night vision.  Took out a mate recently diagnosed with the big C who is undertaking chemo and his wife to try and put them onto a dhuie.  Despite a gentle easterly breeze the boat was drifting pretty much north /south making plotting the drift a nightmare.  Add to that the fact that the lines were all running toward the bow and UNDER the hull.....odd to say the least. The good thing was ex fish were feeding hard when I correctly plotted the drift line.   Both got good dhuies to take home and I got a good baldie and blackarse.  Nice to see a smile on their faces even if they both looked tired out by lunchtime  

Hi Guys

Thought I would post up a quick report which is a couple of months old now!

I did my first trip to the montes end of March, start of April for 10 days. What can I say, what a place! And we were so lucky with the weather as well, fishing every day. Did it with a mate who has done it before, which was comforting as it is so remote.

We launched at fortescue river, and camped at home lagoon. With the good weather, we even did a trip out to rankin bank, which we renamed coronation bank as thats pretty much all we caught on the bottom, plus a few wahoo, marlin and others. We even did a trip back to fortescue to get more fuel, to take advantage of the weather! Couldnt get the boats up on the plane the first trip over, had too much gear! Lesson learned though.

Fishing was unreal, casting lures in the shallows for trout, spangoes. Soft plastics in 15m for rankin and coral trout, to deep dropping for reds! Oysters for dinner one night, mud crabs the next.

My boat, 6.2 coraline with 150 yammy - we used 692 litres, 919 kms travelled, 60 hours added. Trip over used 100 litres, trip back 75 litres.

Anyway I will let the pictures do the talking.

Hopefully the below link works! Lot more photos here.

www.facebook.com/david.lanigan.1/media_set

 Took the misses and kids out around Garden Island on Sunday was hoping to get a little behind it but when i was out there the swell was pretty big so didn't feel confident to stay so just tucked in behind the reef. Setup abit of a burley trail and got the misses and kids baited up there were hundreds of large gardies in the trail and they were onto them straight away, they were upset when i told them that we weren't allowed to keep them some were huge getting hooked on whole mulies and gang hooks. We caught a feed of herring and i got afew flounder which i thought looked like there wasn't enough meat to bother keeping they were over the 25cm limit though. The highlight of the day was watching a seal come into the trail and just started eating flounder after flounder out of our trail my son got a small video of it on my phone which was good. Great day in lovely sunny winter weather 

Headed up to Donagara for the first time this long weekend.

I'll be honest, I found it extremely hard to find decent ground holding fish. We did manage to find one nice little lump though that produced the goods. 

The missus managed to get her first red emperor which was a nice surprise as well as her PB dhu.

If anyones got any advice on finding ground up there I'm all ears.

Launched at Mindarie and were on our way just before sunup. Headed out to the 40-50m grounds with a nice E helping. Beautiful day.

The fishing was a bit slow all day and a lot of moving around was required. I have heard a few reports of Baldies being on the chew so we targeted mainly our baldie grounds, flat coral areas, but they were nowhere to be seen.

By lunch time we had 2 Snapper on board with a few little models released and we changed targets and headed to some previous Dhu marks. Bluey, tattooed bloke in the photo's, has been out with us a few times but is not overly experienced. He made the comment when out there that he really likes the way things get sorted quickly when a nice fish comes alongside. Fish netted, unhooked, dispached and bleed, in esky. He couldnt understand why we ignored his cry for help when he pulled up a bloody big eel. Thing was jagged in the back of the head and had done the typical 3000 twists wrapping itself around, in and through his patanoster rig to the point where sinker to braid was 15cm long.. Lol     You caught it you fix it.

Called it a day when we realized we would only have enough beer left to get us back to the ramp (bad planning there). Ended up with 3 snapper and a whiskery shark for the esky. Good winds and a bloody nice day out with a few mates.

Had a drop in difficult conditions on Friday, Strong current, big swell and wind all going in different directions. Pulled only Knfejaw and something else, green eye's were not the keen either. I had some dolphins come over for a look see also. Sounder pics attached. I should have taken a picture of the sounder once of the fish as the bottom definition is very good and flat lines. Combination of wind current and swell gave a 030deg drift lining me up with 2 areas holding fish but nothing biting.

Other info is travel time from woodmans is 2 hours @15knt avge and fuel burn 25 to 28 ltr diesel P/hour depending on sea state, boat weight 3 ton.

Hey Fellas

I have read every report in the search function! but now chasing some info on anyone that has been to Tamala station lately.
We are taking are 4M tinny and a 5M center console but also would like to get the kids into a bit of beach fishing. Im just chasing some tips and a general report of the area tracks in etc, I have never been but am a regular steep point fisho.

Cheers in advance fellas

Feather

Just returned from two weeks of absolute fishing bliss within shark bay and surrounds, It was my first time heading up there for a dedicated fishing trip so was all new to me.

This is my first write-up so please excuse the layout and phrasing haha

The trip was planned around the Shark bay fishing fiesta, with the first week being dedicated to scoping new ground and working out the best places to be to suit the conditions at the time.


Our first day on the water, we headed straight out to steep point from Denham to scope out ground and do some trolling along the cliffs.
There were plenty of birds and big bust ups on the surface, although mainly being stripped tuna - which we picked up a few for fresh bait.
We saw some 10-20Kg YFT free swimming under some birds which we bombarded with Slugs and poppers but couldn’t get past the stripeys.
After some sounding we stopped on some decent looking ground and picked up a feed of respectable Red-throat - Delicious.
That evening we did a land based squid bash and got a decent feed of squid despite it being very windy.

The next few days we spent inside looking for Blackies and Estuary cod, but only managed a few of-size blackies and a few small whaler sharks.
Between spots we did more squiding on the weed banks and bagged out most days with squid.

Saturday, Day one of the fishing comp we headed out early to behind Dirk hartog and Steep point to do some bottom bashing on some marks we sounded on day one.
It was a slow start up until around high tide, when the bites came through thick and fast, Within a few hours we had a good mixed bag of Rankin, Reds, red-throat, cobia, and Baldchin.

The next day we left a bit later to fish the high tide, with the wind and swell being up from the previous day, we moved to heavier lead and the electrics and upon finding a little honey hole were rewarded with Big rankin, Red-throat, and decent cobia. It would have been great that afternoon as when we were heading back in to Denham, it was like a millpond! Oh well

The Monday was a write off due to engine issues warranting us to return to the ramp.

Tuesday we ran sea trials and confidence checks on the outboard in close, We had no luck with the blackies but bagged out again on the squid - Of note, How aggro are these northern squid haha

Wednesday, The best day weather wise of the whole trip, and with confidence back in the motor we gunned straight out for a final hurrah behind DH, with the wind down we could fish the lighter tackle, so I switched to plastics and jigs to test my new outfit. Sp's produced the goods with Red-throat and Snapper coming in thick and it didn’t take long until we had our Bag, During this Mal the skipper stuck with his electrics and hooked some absolute Unstoppables, which simply refused to leave the bottom. Massive estuary's perhaps? Today was the only day we had any real issues with sharks, only losing about 3 fish towards the end of the session, with us moving spots everytime we lost a fish to one.

The remainder of the week was too windy to head out due to the cold front that had moved in so we cleaned the boat and attended the Festivities of the fishing comp.

All in all it was an excellent trip with a heap of fish nailed off my Bucket list and a bonus freezer full of fillets. A massive thank-you to the shark bay fishing club and all involved who hosted an awesome comp.

We will be back next year for sure!

 Headed out just after 5pm from woodmans point. Caught fresh yellowtail earlier that morning at hillary's boat harbour. 

Burley consisted of mulies, australian salmon. 

Pinky caught on a yellowtail, lightley weighted snell. 7/0 mustard needle point hook with 40lb fluro. 20gram bean sinker. 

Gummy shark on the same rig on a fresh bloody herring fillet. 

2nd gummy caught on a whole live squid. 

bycatch 3 herring, occy , port jackson, gurnad, 2 squid

Had a week up in Coral Bay 12th - 19th May. Weather forecast was wasn't the best, but it dropped off every afternoon. New deckie Andrew scored a nice 9kg Red, not bad for his second ever Red. We also got some nice Rankins and Cobia.

The sharks were out of control this year, they seemed to be bigger as we couldnt get any to the boat. Very frustrating as we would get one good fish then next drift fish would get sharked or the shark would take bait. As soon as sharks showed up we moved, but didnt seem to matter as they seemed to be everywhere.

All up it was a good trip, we fished 6 days straight. Was a bit over it by the end... Bloody Sharks!!!!