Managed to get out for a fish from Walpple on Friday.

Didn't set any records with the early start as I only got to Walpole a bit after midnight. Also after talking to my old man who went the day before the  water was very dirty and the channel very hard to pick due to wet July around the traps so I didn't want to be looking into the sunrise on the way out the mouth.

Snuck out through mouth with only a minor bump on a rock we haven't found before but no damage luckily.  The channel is quite narrow and hard up against the rocks at moment. 

After clearing the mouth we wondered down towards Chatham to try a couple spots we haven't fished before. Started pretty slow with the old man using bait and me on the jigs. Dad was sneaking a few in on board but nothing seemed too interested in the jig I had on. I'm not if sure if it was tide change but the bite seemed to come on bit as the day went on.  Best drift saw the old boy get a 5-6kg dhu plus roughly a 50cm breaksea cod in a double header. I snagged my jig but it turned out to be a good thing as little more weight and some brighter colours helped turn my day around with a few solid breaksea cods, a solid sweep,  a fun size yellow tail and a PB skippy.  We finished 2 short of our demersal bag with our limit of black bum and a few swallow tail at about 1:30pm.  Headed back avoiding all rocks successfully on the way in.

 Last week there was a small gap with all forecasters saying it would be sweet for deep drop but far from it!!

Short version my staff member James Ancell was keen to get some more fish in the freezer and after keeping an eye on the current winds and wasting a lot of time in the morning we headed off anyway!

The conditions offshore were shit house and I said to James you drop and get some fish and we’ll head in as I have fish in the freezer!

James ended up with a Bass Groper and Hapuku and we had one more quick drop and got another Hapuku and headed in!

 Nobody fit the place as having your wife as your fishing buddy for life.

 

 

Thanks for watching my post...

 Been spending alot fo these cold morning and nights sussing the 3 mile............ i Shall let the pics do the talking.

havnt got out int he last few weeks, work took a prioirty for a change! ha 

alot of solo fishes and bag outs....... I am finding Mornings they are far less picky! and the sounder is just as critical as the burely! 

Weather was rough as guts out wide yesterday ... but decided to rough it and head out for a brief fish nonetheless. Managed to bag a few, but drift rate made it challenging. Pic attached.

Cheers
John

This weather lately has made it tough to get a fish in but with a tiny break for this weekend we certainly made the most of it. 2 huge walks to remote places for a good sambo the first day on a live herring and slidebaiting and the second day we got a chance to revisit a spot we haven't fished for years to try get some fillets for the freezer. A hard 3km walk into the ledge and it payed off with 6 fish hooked and 4 landed between the 4 of us. Biggest 16-17kg and smallest about 8kg and kept 2 for some freezer stockers with 2 leadered up and let go back into the whitewash they came from. All the groper landed before 8am and we filleted them on the rocks and packed the fillets into our backpacks and walked out. Mission success and got to blood a new rod with the bigger blue.

 Hi Guys,

heading out for a fish tomorrow and will be looking for Mr pinky, any suggestions,

Cheers

Spent an afternoon on the weekend with a quiet beer making some fishing rigs up while the weather hasn’t been too good.

Left my tackle bag and box out the back under the pergola. 

Next morning woke up to find all my rigs, knives soft plastics spread out all over the lawn.

Bloody dog got into them chewed all my soft plastics and knives handles and ripped the rig bags to bits.

Can’t believe I didn’t end up with a huge vet bill removing hooks from the dog or stitching her mouth up.

My rigs must have been useless as I couldn’t even catch the dog. LOL

Quick run out yesterday arvo between storms. Conditions pretty average but perfect for snapper and 36 ft of Rivierra certainly made it more tolerable, and got my daughters boyfriend Ross onto a few nice snapper, best going 880 mm. 

Just curious what people are using for fishing reports nowadays since the days of John Curtis are over :(.

Also interested in hearing from any Mandurah locals, heading down this weekend to chase some bread and butter species would be good to hear what's biting.

 Went to Garths on the last day my legs are still caning

Saturdays forecast was looking snapper'ish so good mate Frank Fianacca and myself went for a fish and got stuck into the pink snapper!

We bagged out before full sundown and left them on the bite!

Was a great snapper sesh with nice conditions and good company 

Well it's that time of year again and after 20 years of targeting inshore Cockburn Sound pink snapper I still look forward to it!

I went out a few nights ago and took out staff member James and we bagged out on pinky's on baits!

Looking forward to many more sessions out there including targeting them on softplastics and fly! 

 Going to Quobba and 3 mile tommorrow,Have the helium and balloons.Will post pics

 Just back from the annual trip. Spent a month at Winderabandi point. The first 2 weeks were in the company of my chief fishing accomplice, my wife, who then went back to work , to be replaced by my youngest son. We also had a keen pick up passenger from the camp next door a few times, young Jason, who will likely now suffer from an expensive addiction for the rest of his life. Seeing a Black come tailwalking at you from close quarters will do that .   The trip was a bit different to previous years, as we are constantly evolving our fishing methods.  We ventured wider, trolling, for the first time, and were instantly rewarded with a pair of marlin, a little black and a larger striped. This was with my wife and we were driving my son insane posting all these pics. We had four in the first five days out there , then they went quiet. 

The first week was almost non-stop wind, strong SE-S. We went out regardless, just trolled lures for mackerel heading into it, something we normally rarely do,until we had one in the bag, then trolled home out a bit wider with the wind behind. Raised wahoo, mahi, and a sail, but got none to the boat. The second week was much better, had a few beautiful days, and good fish. Big wahoo were about--the first was sharked, the ones boated all went 138-. . Mahi were more plentiful, ate a lot. Mackerel weren't thick, or big, sharks got most. Big Rankins and Coronation were certainly about--probably close to our PB's. All of the really big Rankins go back down on the release weight--big breeders who aren't as good to eat as the sub jobs, keep the breeding stock protected. Had a small blue (?) grab a trolled gar meant for a sail, which was released , and another black took a ballooned gar meant for a sail off the anchored boat,  nearly jumped aboard, and released itself under the boat after a good fight. Those little marlin go hard, harder than a sail, pound for pound, IMO. Sails were very patchy, coming and going. You'd give up trolling after several fruitless days, then there they were again.  Sharks were just as bad as usual, or worse--we had another sail taken, this time on the last day, by a massive whaler, had to be a Bull, who firstly bit it in half, then came in boat side to take the remains, and even hit the prop, idling in gear, to stall the motor. All on video , to follow. Fought another XOS whaler on 80lb gear for over an hour, who had taken a trolled fish and hooked on the lure. Finally broke off 3 metres from the rod tip-- I had harnessed up for the first time, and it makes all the difference.

Throw in some beautiful sunsets, and good company, and you have something you just can't replicate.

Earlier in the year I told my best mate that I would love to do a trip to DHI and Shark Bay.

So when he gave me call only a few months later to ask if I wanted to come to shark bay with some of his mates I was going to do everything in my power to go, even put a new job on hold.

So after I get off the phone the first thing was to convince the wife but she could see how excited I was and encouraged me to go. So with that sorted it was time to do some shopping for the trip so I PM-ed Big John to see which jigs he recommended and put the order in.

I got my mate to buy me the 1500 pg ocea jigger in Perth as they wouldn't take my order over the phone got the %20 off which put the reel still in the most expensive category I've paid but why not ey.

Order some more 7/0 circles , 80 lb leader and was pretty much ready to go.

Every couple of days my mate and I would speak to each other during the build up to the trip about what we might catch, how good the weather was looking and whether to take 1 or 2 boats.

It got to the point where I just wanted to go into a time capsule and get out to the moment where I would drop a jig onto a school of fish in 45 metres and have a double fold on my new combo. You could say the anticipation was high.
With 2.5 weeks still to go and my flights booked to Perth I through myself into researching for the trip and printing out all the relevant information to the trip.

Watching every video on YouTube on Denham sharkbay and the island itself.

The main things I would focus on were the depth that people were fishing in, the types of rigs and jigs and weights but also thanks to living in Broome the importance of tides.

This kept me busy for a while until I had done all I could do was wait. It even effected my sleep towards the end.

I had booked my flight to land in Perth a week before the drive up so I could source all the bait. I caught plenty of herring, salmon and trout in the Fremantle harbour. I bought old squid head from sea lanes for $5 bucks a kilo in cryovac bags. We also paid $20 a kilo for whole king prawns which make a fantastic whole bait just ask anyone in broome

The night before everything was packed and it was decided to bring one boat which the owner had done all the servicing and maintenance that needed to be done.

The drive up we had 2 cars and we had a great run up with no dramas and the Prado towing had great fuel economy 14.5L/100km

When we were all getting very excited, especially about how flat the bay was looking.

We cooked a feed and my mate and I went down to the local jetty to get some fresh bait. He ended up getting 5 squid quite quickly. We spoke to a couple of locals at the boat ramp who weren't giving much away, except if I was a cop with the amount of questions I was asking. We quickly worked out we were going to have to do it on our own.

Having no marks except for the bent pin I knew the first day was going to be a ‘scouting for spots’ day.

When we got back to the house we had to decide if we were going to Turtle Bay or Steep Point first. With the weather looking exceptional we decided to go to Turtle Bay, even speaking about doing an overnighter but it was quickly ruled out.

Off to bed we were not sure how much anyone slept because you could say we were close to peaking.

The next day the alarms were meant to go off at 6am but I woke up at 6.31 am checked my phone and it said it was blowing 0km/ph. I thought my phone was broken so I ran around the house waking everyone up.

The gear was packed fuelled up, bought ice and got ready to hit the ramp. We were gliding along the bay towards Levian Shoal. We could have gone full throttle but wanted to be sensible with the amount of oil and fuel we burned so we sat at 30 knots easily. The crossing is easy the only way you could get caught out if you had a decent draught and it was low tide.

High tide was going to be at 5pm so I had a good feeling from the turn of the low at 12pm the fishing would fire up so in the mean time we scouted new spots and did some trolling.

We trolled for about 20 minutes and the sounder lit up straight away so we started marking spots and quickly got impatient, set our drift and started bottom bouncing. A couple of Chinaman cod came up and we realised it wasn’t gonna be that easy...

The photos will do the rest of the talking...

tonight being the last Wednesday I could head out before the closure I was going rain hail or shine! Lucky for us we found a nice sheltered bay and the rain holding off was a bonus. Net went out at 4.30pm and heading home by 7pm... all in all was a good night 

my share all bagged up, the net pays for its self relatively quickly...

 On the sounder

Pup was keen for a lick

Been some superb sunrises lately. Some pics of my past three early morning runs.

went to try and find the snapper out from hillarys this morning, was first car in the car park just before 6am which was a surprise. Headed down to our usual ground sent out some burley and nothing ! Hung in there till about 7.45am and still nothing so upped anchor and headed to late twenties. An hour and a half saw plenty of fish with 2 dhuies and 2 baldies as take homers, not huge fish but a great morning.

Hi All.

Had a mate tell me he was heading up to barri the week before the school holidays for a few days to hopefully get a surf or 2 in and I had a bit of time up my sleeve and not exactly smashing it in Perth so decided to have a bit of a mates trip away and take the boat up as have another mate up there and had fished a few times there and thought we might get a couple of good days fishing in.

Ended up fishing every day mostly between 30 and 50km north of town the weather was not super but winds were mostly NE or NE and even if howling sticking close to the cliffs gave us some protection and were able to motor along nicley the worst day was the first when it unexpectley turned SW and took 3hrs to get back in slop but was made up for with the several pods of whales we got to see doing there thing just awsome. The last day was the best wind wise and even got a bit of glass so went a bit deeper but could not get anything size apart from 1 baldy.

Did OK on the fish my local mate put us onto some good areas and I think I am starting to understand my new sounder a lot better to see what I am over even managed to hover over a likey looking spot and another mate had a good snapper onboard within almost a minute, have includes a couple of sounder (Elite 9Ti) pics below and still no expert but we pulled good fish off these spots any feedback on them good or bad is appreciated we fished mainly within 500m of the coast due to the wind in 10 to 20m and got a good asortment of pinks and baldies and one dhie which was my first size on the boat and even some good bycatch including a first flounder and my biggest flattie by a long shot.

Booked a house thru KAS at 48 Mortimer and can highly recommend it for a group of boys to go away even a family it had a great outside area and a fire pit which was a nice touch at the end of the day as well as a short walk to the pub (only night we went down for a couple was karaoke night thanks to the locals for the entertainment!), also if OK to say want to give a big up to Jane at the jetty outdoors supplies shop?? got my fuel from there and she looked after me with my bait and some tackle as well as an afterhours number if we came in late and needed fuel.

Lastly a big thanks to my local mate I am a plumber and he is a sparky so destined to clash but to know him is to like him and he fished with me every day except one when he went to Gero for the day for Chemo! without him don't think i would have ventured as far and got many fish a champion considering his health is not the best.

Thanks for reading sorry the pics are not nearly as good as some others post but was more keen to fish than take photos and conditions made it a bit tricky on the boat to stay still, hopefully better ones to come in the future.

Pulled the dhu and a baldy from here before bagging out our only time.

Got 2 snapper and 2 baldies as well as the flattie here.