Offshore Double Island Point

[Reefmaster]

Gday all
Well we headed up to DI Point friday night for a early fish saturday morning. My mate (Thunderbird) headed out the bar early as well. We had a quick troll and caught a mac tuna to 5kg for bait and headed out to the wider grounds in near glass conditions. As we headed to our spot we hit a short wave causing the sounder to die.The rest of the weekend we had to hit the sounder every 10 seconds to make it work for a few seconds. To make things worse the anchor was caught later in the day and came free but with 2 prongs broken off. we put spare anchor on but only has small prongs and thin . Talk about bad luck i thought we must of hit a black cat on the way up but i soon found a few banannas on board and told my Dad to eat them instantly ;DWe went to the pearlie grounds to find very small amounts of pearlies not like usaul. Managed pearlies, job fish, trag, moari cod, parrot and snappery squire. I caught all species above on soft plastics which i found interesting. We then fished further north around red grounds with both boats trying to find fish in the same area. My mates brother scored a 22 pound Red and was his first. We caught more moari cod squire and under sized reds. By 10 oclock in the morning the wind was blowing 15 knots of Northerly which was not a favoured wind.went back to pearlie grounds to find snapper schooled up. We had troubles anchoring with the small anchor on this reef and headed back in close while Thunderbird stayed and got more snapper and Cobia with many big sharks following fish to the boat and hanging around for long periods of time. In close we were straight into pearlies and parrot and the sharks soon moved in and wrecked our afternoon. Any decent fish that were caught would be eaten in 2 seconds and only managed a large mouth Nannygai head and we decided to head back in about 4 oclock in the afternoon. Thunderbird came in just on dark and caught more snapper around 5 kg
We awoke this morning with a good 15-20 knots of Northerly wind and decide not to launch and head home. Thunder bird decided to head back to Tin Can Bay and have a troll before at the pinnicles east of wolf rock and scored 2 nice spanish mackeral in a short period of time before heading in.

A full report and big fish pics will be in the next issue of BushnBeach
Cheers Greg

[Reefmaster]

nice cobia taken in 65 mtrs of water

[Reefmaster]

Lots of snapper about but most were no bigger then this fish

[Reefmaster]

No huge pearlies but many good pan size

[Reefmaster]

job fish in 65 mtrs

[Lucky_Phill]

some of that sea looks a tad lumpy, Greg.

Good work though, and you have to take your chances when the the weather God, says, the winds will be right.

Looking forward to the next trip out.

That ' Thunderbird " looks a lot like' Roota'......... ;D

Cheers Phill

[agnes_jack]

Looks like it was a good trip even with all that bad luck!
Nice one Greg

Tony :)

[Thunderbird]

Thank god we finaly got to wet a line, even if it was only for one day of good fishing. Conditions sure were good on saturday morning but unfortunately the weather didn't play the game long. >:(
Now that no boats fish wolf rock, coming in at nite is a bit more of a worry, as there usualy was a boat or two lit up fishing it of an evening.
Thanks again greg for getting us out of the appalling conditions on saturday nite. That's a neat little lagoon if you know it's there.
Lucky for us no sharks dined on any of our fish, but they did on occasion follow fish up to the surface. we had two sitting off the back of the boat, easy 16ft. :-[I'll use the deck wash to cool off next time. ::)

[JB]

Good stuff greg, sounds like you boys had a ball up there. I would love to get up there and do some spainard trollin between wolf and the headland, what did you get your spainards on?? bait or lures?

5kg of mac tuna would have made for plenty of bait :)

JB

[Reefmaster]

Hey JB
Now that Wolf Rock rock has an exclusion zone of a 1.2km Radius from the central point to protect the Grey Nurse Shark we have to troll in front of the headland or better still the Pinnacles which has some good ledges and massive pinnacles only a couple of km N-NE of Wolf Rock that holds lots of bait and big pelagics. The rigs we use for mackerel are a simple and cheap skirted pink squid with a ball sinker pushed up into the head and followed by a set of ganged 5/0 -6/0 hooks. Bait can added if the fish are fussy or a slower troll is desired.

Cheers Greg

[jimbamb]

Reefmaster'
Do I read ya right pou only use the pink shirt an bare hooks???

[Reefmaster]

Yes exactly how the picture shows. The skirt over a ball sinker which fits tightly into the head and the ganged hooks behind. Rarely do i use bait with this rig. Have been doing this for many years and they seem to work better then hard body lures and hex heads. Have trolled skirts with bait on one and plain skirt on the other and found no difference. I know a few poeple who have gone to this simple rig and can not believe how good it works.

Cheers Greg

[Cloud_9]

Wayne Kampe the fishing writer for fishing monthly uses them all the time at Iluka, he recons there the bees knees, but not good in the bay.

[Reefmaster]

I would agree with you there cloud. ;)

[Gorilla_in_Manila]

If anyone is interested. ::)
I often use the five inch version of that rig with a smaller bean sinker under the head, for tailor instead of a spinner or slug. No bait. Catch just as many or more as anyone beside me using slugs or spoons.
The five inch version with one big longshank is what the old fella trolls behind the ski to catch his tailor.
Knew a fellow at school who told me he caught a good jewie off a breakwall in northern NSW will the same thing. (didn't see him do it though ;)).
Cheers,
Jeff

[Reefmaster]

Hey jeff
the smaller skirt you have mentioned is what i use for flathead. They seem to love them as do many other species by the looks of it.
Cheers Greg