Not as many Metro pelagics about compared with last year but we have still got into some over the past few months. Here are a couple. There were a few maccies caught as well but we seem to have eaten them before we got any photos....maccie still one of my favourite fish fresh, although the marinaded YFT last night donated by Langa was pretty good!

We have dropped a couple of very big YFT lately.....still trying to crack the magic 30kg metro YFT.

So here is my report for our annual family holiday to Monkey Mia.  This is our 11th year and each time we go i try to advance my knowledge of the area and the fishing techniques.  In that regard i think i succeeded.  In the past we have been told to use fresh butterfish as bait and this trip we found a spot close to monkey mia where we could stop and catch plenty of them for the live bait tank.  This we did most mornings before heading out to our chosen spot for the day.  We also found a couple of new spots where we caught much bigger blue lined emperor, or black snapper as they are locally known.  I fished much more with bait this year rather than jigs or soft plastics.  Interestingly we didnt see one sized pink snapper.

As previously mentioned, I had my Yamaha boat motor key stolen and I need a new one. I don't unfortunately have a spare and am unable to get the code from the key so can't order a new key? Any ideas what to do? Thanks

My boat normally gets stored down in Freo in undercover storage, however last week I had it connected to the car on the front lawn for a few days as I was using it most days. I dropped the boat back off into storage last Thursday.

This morning I went to my car and scumbags have broken into my car and gone through the glove box and stolen my keys for the boat starter, storage facility and boat club. They didn't take the brake controller, ipod shuffle on the back seat, or $2 in change, or even the keys to my old boat. They actually have stolen nothing else.

They have got no idea where I store my boat plus they would need the PIN to get in, they could go to the boat club and steal the ice from the ice fridge but the button security has been cancelled and they have keys to start the boat, but no boat.
So whether it is a local that knows I have a boat and has stolen the keys so when I leave my boat on the front lawn next time they can steal it and use it, or whether they thought the keys were for my house, I've got no idea.

Bloody inconvenience of getting new keys and fixing car window - very weird criminal this one.

Please enlighten me with previous experiences of this or a good explanation as to why they stole only the boat keys to my good boat instead of my crappy old fibreglass boat.

Grey Ghost (Rob Yates)

Bigger than I expected!!!!

I had better be able to see down to the centre of the earth with this bad boy.

Had a couple of trips out over the Remembrance Long Weekend fishing from Hillarys.

The first trip was a “hunter gatherer” mission as Jill’s relations were over from Sydney to visit the "newborn" (originally from WA) and I was asked to get them all a feed of fresh fish – didn’t take much asking really.  Headed out on Saturday afternoon with Michael (zOOm - he seems fairly keen to keep in touch and head out with me and we always have a good time).  Conditions were very calm after the Easterly (perhaps too calm) and the plan was to fish relatively shallow (20m+) from NW of Hillarys, South to the Southern Cardinal Marker.  It is fair to say the fishing was fairly slow although zOOm got a nice sized gummy and I got a sized Breaksea in the first hour or so.  The gummy was released but the Breaksea is Jill’s favourite so went in the slurry.  We landed a variety of other species on our travels and released them all.

We got to the spot to anchor up for the night fish and the sounder was much more positive.  Set the burley pot a few metres off the bottom and the activity continued.  The fishing was improved with a fairly constant bite with quite a few undersized pinkies, undersized Dhu and a variety of other things.  Everything released well as we were in fairly shallow water and it was certainly entertaining.  Just after dark I dropped a slab bait down and it was immediately snaffled by something with a bit of size that was peeling line off.  After a lively fight it was good to see the 5kg+ Dhu come to the boat.  Nice, mission accomplished and the in-laws would like that offering.  Not a huge fish but a good one in relatively shallow water.

At one stage in the evening, Michael looked at the sounder and said “something big is coming up to the burley cage!”.  There was clearly an “s” shape from the bottom to the cage, then there was a thud of line on the hull and all we had left was string.  Must have been quite large to take a 320mm x 115mm cage.  Everything seemed to shut down after that and it was deemed time to come in.

ANZAC Day is the annual Wally Lothian Competition at the MACC, in honour of a legendary club member – see the Club website for details on Wally.  The “Wally” is an inshore comp with the boundaries being the Ocean Reef leads to the North, the Southern Cardinal Marker to the South and the reef to the West.  It is a 4-hour event with the sail past at 8am following the service and the weigh in by noon.  The fish is all filleted and cooked by “the fishers” for consumption by the general members in what is always a good afternoon in the Boatshed.

With the rising swell on Monday the plan was to go early and chase some of the inshore pinkies (not to be weighed in of course as they would have been caught outside of comp hours) as the Wally is a social comp you are not restricted to leaving the marina at a certain time - the comp begins after the sail past.  Up early and let’s just say the conditions were atrocious so I went back to bed.  I did give some thought on “bailing the Wally”, but the significance of the day got to me – what is a bit of rain, wind and swell compared to what our WW1 Hero’s had to sacrifice to guarantee our freedom.  Yes, I was going to get wet and it was going to be uncomfortable (I have a small open boat) but you just have to do these things.  I let the young deckie off however as she has had the last 2 comps in the rain, so it was solo for me.

Conditions in the lead up to the sail past were not too bad and I was so glad I participated in the event.  To hear the Ode and the Last Post across the water (it was so clear as sound travels really well over the ocean) was truly awesome and a nice moment to reflect on the fallen hero's.  I took a photo of the Club and all of the people on the lower level but it didn’t come out that well.  The other image is a “zoomed” photo from shore with my little boat on the right with me in my fluoro rain gear.

As soon as the service was over the heavens opened.  On the way out to the first spot the storm strength rain came through.  It bucketed, and although I had the heavy rain gear on it just drenched everything.  There was no escaping the rain, wind and chop all morning – conditions I would never normally fish.  I fished on, got my bag of herring eventually (fishing in relatively sheltered spots to the East of any hazard) and was very cold and miserable.  Back to the Club (didn’t bother to weigh-in) to fillet the fish.  As I was filleting we got another storm rain event and the gutters discharged onto the filleting tables and drenched me with more water and fish guts.  Anyway, I kept going and handed in my handful of filleted, skinned and de-boned fresh fish for the day – a small offering but I did it.

At least I could go home, after a couple of brews, and have a hot shower (20 minutes in the foetal position trying to get warm again) before going back for an enjoyable afternoon with good people.  Our Diggers did not have that luxury. 

LEST WE FORGET. 

managed to get out probably for the last time at seabird there is no access onto the beach anymore the water erosion has taken the beach access away only way I could get out was making my own track which was ruff as guts riding a sand bank as the trailer crabbed walked rite on the waters edge. Only way on and off the beach with a boat is the caravan park and you have to stay there to use it. But after all the excitement off trying to get the boat to the water we managed a feed.

Hi all, 

Been getting amongst the metro salmon of late with plenty caught and released.

Attached short video of quick late arvo solo dash I did on Saturday. Lots of boats but plenty of fish around and everyone being sensible. 

http://youtu.be/kkFv_0P1G9Q

Cheers,

Joycey

Headed down south to Augusta with fellow fishwrecked member Dylan (Hutch).

Arrived at Augusta at around 4:30pm on Wednesday and went for a fish straight away. We just went out the front of our caravan park (Flinders Bay) we only fished for about an hour with minimal success we only had one run and landed one barely legal Tarwhine.

Later that night we headed down to the marina for a fish, we caught lots of yakkas for bait the next morning.

Thursday morning the alarms went off at 6:30 and we went out in the kayak for a fish. We paddled about 500-600m out before dropping the anchor. The fish were on straight away but unfortunatley they were only wrasse and lots of them, after half an hour of pushing through the wrasse Dylan finally hooked something that pulled about of drag on the light gear, after fighting it for a couple of minutes up popped a lovely little 35-40cm pinkie, during the next couple of hours we had fun with skippy, eagle rays and an undersize blackass. The call was then made to throw out the big rods in hope for something a bit bigger, every bait was smashed by squid but didnt land any since we forgot the squid jigs. 5 minutes later the snapper came on in there thousands with every bait being smashed, unfortunatley they were all 35-45cm so they were all released. Suddenly we here my drag scream, straight away we knew this was a much better fish then small pinkies, we called it for a sambo since it took a surface bait but after a small and exciting fight up popped a 1.17m hammerhead, after a bit of struggling we got him in the yak. I was excited since the banter about my gosa not catching any fish could finally stop. After this fishing slowed down so we headed back to camp.

Later that night we cooked up the hammerhead on the gas stove, in my opinion it was one of if not the best fish I have ever tasted. After dinner we headed down to the marina again only to find the same species as the night before along with some herring.

The next morning we woke up in hope of a land based sambo, we headed to a likley looking spot, the first step was to catch a live bait, in this case a herring, unfortunatley we only got one, but it got smashed twice by nice sambos unfortunatley no proper hookups, after not being able to catch a live bait, we changed to poppers, Dylan had a monster 35kg+ one follow his lure right to the rocks then a few casts later he hooked up to a smaller model only to lose it not long into the fight. Nothing else happened so we called it a day.

Later that night we went for a shark fish at a likely looking beach, Dylan yakked a couple of baits out only to be smashed by port jacksons

The next morning we got up and packed our gear up to leave Augusta. We went up to Dunsborough to meet up with Max Sampson (doubleheader_king) to catch some sambos at a spot he knew, unfortunatley this plan failed as we were on a tight schedule. Lucky enough we heard of the salmon being on around Bunker Bay, we had no luck though, luckily Max had another spot in mind so we fought the crowds and got into a couple of nice salmon. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: if youre going to take a couple of salmon home for a feed, please only take what youre going to eat as these fish are an amazing sport and a great fish to catch, also please dont bleed your fish all over the rocks, its uncomfortable and slippery trying to chase a fish on blood invested rocks.

Cheers Dylan and Max for coming and we should definetley do it again sometime

Cheers for reading

 Left two rocks marina at midday yesterday after the wind was forecast to drop off. Headed out 30km in NW direction in search of new ground as my other marked spots have been producing alot of undersize dhueys and baldies last few trips. Sounded around for a while and happened upon some ground that dropped off quickly from 34m to 48m metres and schools of fish lit up on the sounder at the deep end. Dropped straight onto them and bang up came the dhuey in first pic that was just under 12kg. Baits down again up came the other smaller dhuey in pic2 at 8 kg. Between the mrs and myself we then got 3 undersize baldies, two breaksea cod with one being a keeper at 44cm and the mrs got a little dhuey that went back and a big arse sea sweep that fought like hell very much like a pinky with lots of headshakes. Went back over the same area again and got the double header of good dhueys in pic 3 which of course also went back. Decided we had plenty of quality fillets for the freezer and headed back in windless conditions with the ocean having that "oily silver silk" look - was a fantastic few hours out  .    

 Went diving and line fishing on the mid west coast yesterday. Left old mates about half six as the wind didnt require getting up at sparrows.

First location saw shot and missed and couple of dhus Estimated around 75 & 80 cm. Also had some small baldies and undersize dhus as we were searching. Only small family of crays seen.

After missing a few i came across one not great but in at 56cm. 

Lunch break ensued we move south half a mile. Met with loads of activity and plenty of just size and undersize baldies. Mate gave one a career change to the icebox that went 46cm. More small baldies and undersize ones kept lurking. Not wanting to pull the trigger i held off. 

Mate came across a dhu that went 67cm surprised that it was skinny given similar sized dhus caught have been much fatter.

Still waiting for the larger baldie model to arrive a couple in the mid 50s came in for a look. In my inept and feeble futile attempt to stalk one of them i shot and missed. Off they went. 

My mate then pointed at a dhu guestimated in the low 80s i knew i should have held off but luck of the draw she lived to breed another day.

with low light we berleyed up and in came the undersize and just size baldies. Thinking i had the go home fish it was not to be just a good fighter for size. Back it went. Up came a blackarse just under 40cm it went back. Finally a baldie that went 45cm came over the side. with the sun low and wind light we packed up and headed back.

A great day but very surgey and strong northerly current. We missed the kitchen at the endeavour tavern so it was pizza and a quick stubby on the way home. All in all a good day

 Gidday fishos been months since I've posted so I'll let ya in on a tip, the Murray is going off with good size mullys and saddleback black bream, Wednesday night went to a secret location with multiple bust offs on fish I'd estimate to over 15kg. We were lucky enough to land this fat healthy girl at 12kgs and full of roe. A couple quick snaps and she was released back into the mighty Murray. Bait - live poddy mullet. Weapons - small 6/0 60lb leader with a running sinker, pen950 50 lb braid matched with 15kg boat rod, heavy gear is needed to put the hand break on before they run ya into the snags,

Headed up to the Monties last week with the new boat for a faimly trip, kids and partners invited.It wasn't a hardcore fishing trip at all!

We managed 2 bluewater fishing trips which resulted in a few longnose, perch but we just couldnt get past the sharks.

All in all a amazing fishing snorkelling camping trip with a great crew!

Yes it was towed by a Jeep, performed amazingly. No idea how anyone can tow anything bigger than a 7.5m but the weight adds up seriously fast!

Few Tweaks and we set off:

760L Fuel ( used 560L)

280ah House batteries, 1400cca Start battery, Ctek battery management, 200w Solar.

1 Engel on Freeze, 1 of Fridge and 1 isotherm.

200l of Water

The Boat purred along on 1km/l which i was pretty happy with considering the weight.

The conditions were pretty horrible as you can see!

Cheers,

Vinnie

 have the option to do a last minute tag along trip for the Anzac weekend but so far only the sat looks good enough for a fish. Has anyone down there atm and can report on how the fishings been? Otherwise I'll stay in perth and watch the footy. Cheers 

 First day we got out as a family being pretty calm most the day we went straight over to the channel where the kids had a ball, mum and my daughter done the best with a thumping blackie and a good rankin.

Second day out it was sloppy so went close to the island to try our black snapper spot we hadn't been to for 2 years and they where biting well until the blowies turned up and made it a bit harder but we managed our bag limit.

Last day we got out fishing we went to our main spot up close to the top off dirk hartog and managed a 13kg cod and a 4 kg coral trout, heaps off estuary cod around released 4 over 7kg

A mate and I decided to give the Mum's s rest and have a dads week down at Cheynes Beach Caravan Park with 4 kids aged 4-9. After day 1 we decided to name the week "mum appreciation week!"

Headed out to fish for fun last Saturday after the strong morning easterly abated, and spent some time on the water without competition rules and timeframes.  Have fished a lot of comps lately and although it was the Hillarys Yacht Club day, Saturday was about enjoying being out there in excellent conditions and trying a few different things.

Left Ocean Reef about 2.30pm and headed West.  The plan was to go into the 40’s and search the known area for fish aggregations, spot lock the Minn Kota and just give lots of different locations a go over a few hours.  We would then pick the “likely” spot to fish dusk and hopefully get a few pinkie schools move through.  Check out a few spots closer to shore on the way in and see what was there too.  Anyway, that was the plan.

A good run out with the residual easterly chop and a 1-2m SW swell not being a real bother.  Looked at the ground until we saw fish on the sounder.  It didn’t take long for the fish to bite, with my rod buckling within a few minutes of a squid head going down.  After about 10 minutes of quality fight it came to the boat and was a good sized sambo.  I reckon it was around 20kg, pretty heavy, and we returned it alive straight after the photo.  A few minutes later, a quality Harlequin.  A nice start.

We caught fish all afternoon.  We brought home harlequin, dhufish, baldie and pinkie (demersal bag limit).  We successfully released many fish of different species.  It was constant.

During the “pinking hour” we saw a lot of schools of big pinkies move under the boat but we couldn’t tempt them, and we tried a lot (the size one, 540mm, was caught earlier in the day). 

The conditions were so good we decided to move in and night fish a few shallower spots.  Found a school of tailor and continued with a wide variety of fish landed and released.  Just as we were “packing up” I caught the biggest wobby I have ever seen.  This thing was 6’+ and a back breaker – cut the hook off at the boat.  After that, head in and back to the ramp about 10pm.

Fished with a good mate and we had a great trip in excellent conditions.

Mate (milesy) took me out today and to get onto some dhus, spent a lot of the day going to spots that usually produce. Besides coming home empty handed, there was barely anything showing up on the sounder. Covered a lot of ground, and he has a lot of spots that produce good fish, every thing seemed a bit off.

Just curious if anyone has any insight of what could attribute to this? Unless the metro area has just been severely thrashed, still seemed a bit odd. That we couldn't find anything even decent

Havent posted for a while. Been doing ok on the Dhufish out from Cockburn. 35m -40m.Local occy doing the damage.

 Well, at about 2:30 this morning we got home from our annual trip to Exmouth. I think it is now 4 different cars in 4 years - this time in a 1988 Hj61 Landcruiser with the factory turbo diesel and 5 speed manual. It towed the boat beautifully with an average of 14.5L/100 over the entire trip. The weather was hot, but cooled off at night enough for a good nights sleep... We did all of our fishing / diving in the gulf, but the spring tides stirred up the water terribly for most of the trip. Attached are a few photos of a bit of a variety of what we did - the deepest fish caught was in about 1.5m of water. I had a terrible time spearing in the dirty water, missing a couple of Jacks that would have easily gone 65cm - I will be after them next year!!

The wind did not look too hot for Saturday morning and therefore Gail and I decided to launch after lunch and fish into the early evening.  I was also keen to get some further footage on the Salmon at Mewstone and Gail wanted to stretch her arms chasing a couple of these turbo-charged torpedoes.  

We arrived at Mewstone at around 2 the afternoon and were greeted by about 20 boats in the area.  Gail's third cast with the Maria Blues Code and she was attached to her first of five Salmon for the afternoon.  Whilst we were fishing here I witnessed what looked like a seven foot Bronzie climb clean out of the water whilst chasing Salmon.  I have never, and odds are, will never see something like this again.

As the afternoon progressed we made our way to the channel between Garden and Carnac where Gail picked up a Pinkie on a mullie that was being towed behind the boat.  I was lobbing soft plastics, but only had one bump with no hook-ups.  As the sun dipped over the horizon we moved off to Harding Rock and dropped the anchor.  During the next three hours of fishing we managed and number of Shark and Rays all caught on fresh Salmon fillet (kept because it was hooked in the gills).

Watch the action at the link below

https://youtu.be/hsuePGeZSg8

 Took the (future) brother in law out for a run with a view to having our first real crack at jigging and using soft plastics. Found some good looking ground with a few fish on the sounder and had a couple of drifts. I started with a jig and he had some plastics. On the second drift I hooked up to a dhu, albeit a baby one. A few drifts later Dave got a good sized blackarse on the plastic. Went a bit quiet for me in particular, and in the next hour and a half (or so) we only had one more touch that resulted in a baldy on the plastic. 

My first fish on jig:

We decided to have a look around the place and came across this likely looking area:

Didn't matter what we did we couldn't get a hook up. I made the call to change to my secret (plan B) supply of bait and put a plastic out on the other rod. Dave kept persisting with plastic. First drift a couple of good touches and lost bait. Nothing on the plastics. 

Went back for another drift and got a dhu that was just size, but probably would have gone under by the time he was iced up so I let him go. Dave then chucked a bait rig over and hooked his first dhu at 67cm.  

With the new found increase in catch rate we pretty much gave up on the plastics and stuck with bait. Next drift got another 65cm dhu and one in the mid 50's somewhere so we let the smaller go and packed up. Ended up with the bag below between the two of us. 

So the bait smashed the artificials. The jigging was also alot more labour intensive than the normal bottom fishing, but the plastics weren''t too bad. My arms and back are  bit sore today from the new technique but I dont think that would be a drama once I was used to it. Given the slight encouragement we got with the first couple of fish I will give it a crack some other time, but can't see my boat becoming bait free any time soon.

You'll also notice one of them had a tag in it. Turns out he was caught about two years earlier by Paul G in exactly the same spot that we got him, and he had grown from 54 to either 65 or 67 (can't remember which one he was). 

Working away a bit it had been a while since I had the chance to get out with Ryan. Early in the week we had spoke about targeting a few salmon on fly and then looking for a bit of a feed with looking for some squid. We picked Friday for the day to head out with the forecast of the sun being out and enough wind to help with the drift for looking for squid.

I had recently moved place and all of my squid jigs were still at the old place so ducked into Oceanside before heading out. After talking to the boys about what depth we were going to squid we came up with a chosen few from the huge selection on offer. Pinks and whites in a range of weights were chosen, and a bit of fluorocarbon leader for making up some tippet and we were good to go.

We were on the water and heading out to Mewstones and upon arrival there were a fair boats out there looking for the salmon. We cleared the deck to make room for the fly line and went in search for the fish. There were a lot of people in search of these fish with metals and bibbed minnows being chucked around everywhere. After a bit of searching and just watching the sounder we located the school and realised were they were holding up. If people just took a bit more time in looking at there sounder and realising these fish are hugging the bottom due to the amount of boats they could really increase there catch rate with also the right choice of lure. We saw people with poppers and slices cranking them across the surface knowing there was no chance they were going to get fish. A sinking stick bait or letting the metal sink would have been ideal.We were using 8 weight rods with sinking line to get 2/0 clousers down to the fish and resulted in hook ups every time.

After a few fish each we went in search for a feed of squid. Each spot we went to would produce a few and then go quiet. We persisted with spots and depths until we found a spot that produced some huge squid and good numbers. It pays to have a few spots to go to and try when they aren't firing and change up the colour and weight if your jigs. We caught our limit and were washed up and back in plenty of time to sit down and get ready to watch the footy. A well planned day that produced everything we set out to do. A bit of planning and paying attention to what is going on goes a long way. Thanks Ryan and the boys from Oceanside.

 Staying in exmouth for a few days and headed out on a charter today, my god this place sucks! Haha i understand it was a big cattle boat with 10 lines down at any given time but the sharks here are relentless everywhere we went. Hooked some ablosute hooters but had no chance against the masses of sharks. What does everyone do? Was it just a problem coz we were on a charter boat that makes a heap of  noise and stink? Or is it just exmouth? The fish that did come over the side were handlined up by the deckies, which just aint fishin in my books. Still had an awsome day on the water but woulda loved to at least see the brutes i was hooking.

Hey guys Has anyone got an old B260 performance fairing (the 'kn hooge one) that they are not using or have ripped off a boat. Does not need to be perfect as I am getting a new one but need a get, Looking to do a few tests on my hull so gonna cut it up and dummy fit.......Putting a B265 ML inside it. Cheers

 Just an update on Hannah and my trip to Ningaloo , in billabong very bloody sad to be heading home but thought I'd post a few pics. Did a lot of deep dropping as sharks in closer were just taking almost every good fish hooked .

anyway here's some pics of what we picked up

 Chasing sandies out from Golden Bay today outside the reef and noticed several schools of salmon, didn't have a lure. Expect to see a few boats out that way on the week end. 

Good luck.

As I write this, I am travelling back from my second trip to Papua New Guinea fishing aboard K20. Truth be told, I had not really planned on going back there so soon after my December trip – but I had some spare time and an opportunity came up to get a last minute spot to explore the Port Lock reef system as well as revisit Eastern Fields, so it seemed it was meant to be.

This trip report will not be my normal day by day recounting of fish caught, or a description of the fishery and operation which you get access to when you book one of these trips (all of that is covered in my December report for anyone keen to learn more). Unfortunate though it may be, this report is, like many fishing stories, more about the ones that got away than those that hit the decks.

I have spent the last week contemplating how we judge what is or is not a ‘successful’ fishing trip. I think for me having a few trips under my belt now – it comes down to achieving targets you set out to achieve before the trip – rather than just to put a hook into as many fish as possible (unless of course that is the target you set out to achieve!).

For me, Papua New Guinea has always been about two things. I’ve had big doggies before – but I’ve never yet had a true monster class fish. I want one – just one – but catching one of those most frustrating of demon fish is at the top of my list of fishing ambitions. The second objective was to land a Napoleon Wrasse on surface lure.

On the second of those points I’ll spare you the suspense. One of the lads on the trip named Alvin landed two Napoleons on this trip – both on popper, and the second being a beautiful big 20-25kg bright green specimen. Anthony jigged a smaller one, being his second to date. Not even remotely jealous….. I’m still yet to see one in the flesh – and yes, many ‘consolation beers’ were drunk on the night of Alvin’s second.

Generally speaking the fishing was pretty tough. The fish were there – they were following lures – but they really didn’t want to commit. The overall number of fish was reduced further by the fact that unlike the first trip where I fished quite a bit of light tackle also – this trip was nothing but the heavy kit on casting.

To make a long story short, we averaged around 10 dogs and the same in GTs a day – plus the usual bycatch of dinosaur coral trout, jobbies, red bass etc. GTs and dogs to around the 30kg mark were landed amongst the group. Some nice size, but nothing earth shattering landed.

But the point of this story is really about my first target. The big dogs. We’d hooked some pretty big fish on the first trip to Eastern Fields, but I wasn’t really certain that we’d found the beasts that I sought and we certainly hadn’t landed anything over 35kg. This was all about to change on the second day of this trip.

There’s a small atoll that sits a distance from the main Eastern Fields reef system. In the afternoon of the second day two of the tenders (including mine) went out to look and see what we could find on some marks that produced on the last trip. First drop and I had a nice little warmup doggie on the decks. It was a decent fish, but after seeing the other lads get sharked I was fishing sunset drag on PE8 on my Saltiga LD35 with heavy spool thumbing and made sure the fish didn’t get a turn of line off me so I could get him in for a pic and release as quick as possible.

Then I dropped again…. I was using one of the Jigging Master Fallings 260gr jigs that to date has hooked me more dogs than anything else. In hindsight, I probably should have kissed it goodbye or at least wished it luck as I dropped it to meet its fate. Before my line colour showed that I’d let out the appropriate amount of string to get me to the bottom, it stopped peeling off the spool. Hit on the drop. Righto then – set the hooks, and the massive BKK Deep single in 13/0 struck home. There it was – that telltale pause where the dog sits there still and shakes his head, realises his predicament – and then that run. That incredible first run, that really is what doggie fishing is all about (other than disappointment, which I’ve learnt is a huge part of this sport!). And then he was off – but this was different. It wasn’t the usual 50m dash at incredible speed and then the relentless pressure gets the better of him and you turn his head – this was a different ballgame. I knew in the first seconds that this was it – the one I’d travelled to the other side of the world to get my shot at. He didn’t stop after 50m. He didn’t stop after 100m. In fact, he didn’t stop at all. Every kilo of drag that my LD35 could put out was being used, as was so much thumb pressure that I burnt two gloves and my thumbs beneath them – and just as I saw the last few wraps of line on my spool about to disappear I pushed down with one last bit of strength and managed to pop the PE8 mainline. It was a truly humbling experience. After winding in what remained of my slack line, I sat down and contemplated the biggest ass kicking I’d ever been handed by a fish.

But there’d be time to have nightmares about that moment later. The tide had changed, and the fish were on the chew.

We kept jigging that spot for a while and no result. So it was time to move to another mark near a small reef outcrop. First drop and I couldn’t believe it. The exact same sequence of events that had taken me years of attending such trips to experience – occurred again. Gargantuan dog strike – blistering run – burnt fingers – except this time something was different. My freshly serviced Saltiga decided it didn’t have what it took to stand up to this punishment. As the drag completely failed mid-run and my line disappeared into the sunset, I realised that I had brought a feather duster to a gunfight.

Now I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just sit back in the midst of the greatest big doggie bite I’d ever witnessed. But on the other hand, my heavy jigging combo was completely out of action. So what else to do but cast?

I grabbed the heaviest casting combo I had with me. Carpenter Monster Hunter 80H, Stella 18k, PE10 Jerry Brown solid braid. Strapped on the heaviest stickbait I had with me (FCL Labo HJ200 rigged with the enormous BKK Lone Diablo 13/0 inline singles) and had a cast. These FCL sticks were fast sinkers and as I knew the dogs were striking my jigs about 30m under the boat I cast out a medium length cast and counted down 45 seconds or so before beginning a long sweeping retrieve. You can imagine my surprise when after about 4 sweeps of the lure I came tight! After some frenzied hook setting I managed to get the rod butt into the gimbal and felt the rod load up – but it wasn’t the blistering run I had hoped for. Nope – it was that heavy plodding feeling that can only come from a filthy whaler of some description having grabbed your lure. Sharks were an ever present issue on this trip – much moreso than in December – but we found that whenever the sharks were in big numbers, the dogs were there also. So you just had to persist.

Thankfully the prick of a shark bit me off pretty quickly and I was able to tie on my last HJ200 and try again. First cast, 4 or 5 sweeps, on again! But another f#cking shark! This one was smaller and had bitten only on the lure so I was able to haul him up in short order, tell him what I thought of him, and throw my now battle scarred lure back for another attempt.

But what happened next is one of those fishing moments that will stay with me until the end of my days. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of sharks just sub-surface so I decided to count down about 90 seconds with my stickbait and then work it up more quickly than I had before. First drop – no result. Second drop, and I felt something swipe at my lure but not connect, kept working it flat out and then bang, fish on, and this was no filthy whaler. I set the hooks and felt the pause, headshakes, and then the run. The run I’ll never forget.

It’s one thing to hook a big dog on jigging gear. It’s another thing entirely on an 8 foot rod. I knew already from my consecutive ass kickings that these fish were no joke so I had set the drag almost to max before casting (the second shark didn’t manage to take a single click of line). But as soon as I managed to get the rod butt into the deep socket on the MC Works Gimbal I screwed down that last half turn of drag on the Stella 18k and leaned back as hard as I could. The big Stellas can pump out a hell of a lot of drag, and I’m not the biggest guy getting around. To be honest if it hadn’t been for Stephen seeing my predicament and running over to grab the back of my belt, I probably would have gone straight overboard. That run seemed to happen both incredibly quickly and incredibly slowly at the same time. I watched the spool rapidly begin to empty and started to use my glove to add even more pressure to the spool. Everything now felt totally on the limit. Hooks, knots, line, reel and most of all, angler! I have never before (even in pics online) seen such a bend in an MH80H which was bent over like a PE5 tuna noodle rod and I just waited for something to pop (with my back being the most likely candidate).

But remarkably everything held. However no matter how much I tried to slow down this demon fish – it just wasn’t enough. By the time this fish had originally grabbed the lure I probably only had 40 or 50m of line out. But now, the supply of PE10 left on the spool was looking dangerously thin. As I saw the shiny spool begin to appear through the line below without even having slowed this thing down let alone stop it, I knew I was stuffed. I lowered the rod angle, grabbed the spool as hard as I could and hoped something would pop before the rod got yanked overboard. Thankfully it did, as the mainline parted and I sat there staring at the water for a few minutes. I didn’t even have that feeling you sometimes get when you lose a fish where you feel the need to yell and scream in frustration. It was more a case of ‘well played mate, well played’. He’d earned his freedom. I’d learnt a lesson.

If you ask me what I landed that day, it doesn’t sound that impressive. Bit of by catch and one small to medium sized dog. But I came back to K2O that night and told people honestly that that day of fishing was one of the three all time best fishing days of my life. It’s the kind of day that reminds me why we spend the cash to travel to these out of the way spots to do battle with these beasts, even though we know that we won’t always win.

As I said this won’t be normal report. I could describe the rest of the days’ fishing, but in truth the writeup would be not dissimilar to the above. Personally I had two more sessions where I hooked multiple of these stupid sized fish that had eluded us on the first trip. These subsequent sessions were in much deeper water (120m+) and our odds of getting them up were even lower, and we just couldn’t land them.

We tried going easier on them. We tried using the heaviest jigging gear we could find (Anth was using PE13!) and towing them away from the pinnacles, but the pricks were just unstoppable. And so the trip came to an end, with us having had at least 20 chances amongst us at fish the size of which dreams are made of – a strike number which I really don’t think you could claim anywhere else in the world. We had blown reels, spooled reels, broken rods, popped mainline of every calibre, bent hooks, opened split rings and totally emptied jig bags. But not one of us landed a dog over 30kg. I guess that’s big doggie fishing, and that’s partly why I love it.

I have another big doggie trip coming up later in the year and I honestly don’t know what to do differently (other than replace my reel!) but I can’t wait to get out there and have another go at landing these demon fish.

More info on all kit used can be found at www.adventureangler.net
 

If you'd like to go and get some big dog action yourself, we are now taking bookings for the 2017 season so please drop me a message to secure prime dates.
 

Casting a decent shark bait directly into a 35km/h SW wind I was extremely suprised to see this cuda hit the beach, especially since my bait must of been 20m out at the most. Rarely keep any fish except for use as bait but unfortunately it bled out quite quickly on the beach so we had a decent supply of fillets and bait for the trip.

Googled some recipes but mainly found warnings of cigutera and that they taste like shit any way. Fuck that, after the amount of effort it was to fillet and pinbone it was dinner for the rest of the trip. Soaked the fillets in milk each day and they tasted great every night was definitely no need for a strong marinade or seasoning.

It was hot, many a beer and bundy by this point....

Only managed to land two sharks the whole trip, was a few unstoppables hooked which came close to dumping a spool of 65lb braid under locked drag before the serves on my wind on leaders would give up.

Blacktip I'm guessing?

And lastly one of my favourite fuckn sharks, as if the going ballistic and thrashing around on the sand wasn't fun enough already this one actually had a proper go at grabbing my hand while removing the hook. Not just a random head shake but a full on attempt at getting my hand and it's mouth connected. 

Cheers

Found some new ground last Saturday and was good to get back on the scoreboard with a couple of nice Dhus after a quiet run for us lately. Also picked up a 11kg sambo while trolling behind the 20m edge off two rocks. Thoughts of a nice metro mack had morale up for a little while before he got to the boat

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