Got out this morning early from Manly, heading up to the new ground off Moreton I've been working over lately. I wanted to see if our last trip was a fluke and continue to hone some new skills on light gear off shore.
Crew for the trip was the ever reliable Swano (back from messing with pink eyed bucket mouthed perch in freshwater impoundments in Central and North Qld) Matt and another mate Gil.
We left around 4.00am, a great trip across the bay to hit the bar as dawns crack appeared. The shingles were quite lumpy but the bar was very well behaved so we got out without incident. We headed to some ground to the north and began the search and drop, catchy/chasey.
It wasn't long before the sound of squappery things began to hit the deck...nice table fish to around 2kg, with the occasional bigger specimen to 4kg thrown in for good measure and the chook was the stand out performer.
i had a purple patch boating fish off both SP and Bait, often having both rods going a t once. We had 16 fish in the boat by 7.00am and looked a sure thing to bag before 8, but suddenly the fish shut down around the turn of the tide and at around the same time the wind dropped off so there was no movement at all. We decided to head into deeper water and headed out to 80-90 mts. We found a promising structure with good show, after a couple of quick drifts, we decided to anchor and burley but by then the current had Kicked again in making it difficult to anchor and fish.
So we headed back into the shallower ground to another area we did well at last time out.
We picked up our last few snapper and 2 maori cod 4 &5 kg respectively and called it at 2.00pm.
Swano nailed the best two fish of the trip, a snap that went 70 cms and 5plus kg and a nice Maori that went 5kg. We arrived back at manly just before 4.00pm with a nice box of fish. final tally, 20 snapps, 2 maori cod. Gil nailed a 25plus kg gold spot that we released, Swano caught a stripey on a choook which was fun and Matt spent all day inventing ways to drop good fish! He called the technique "catch and pre-release release" but I don't think it will catch on. Na, seriously, I reckon his braid was dodgy. It kept popping and on reasonably light drag settings too. I wonder, does braid have a shelf life? Could be a question for tackle chat.
It was a great day with a great crew, and its exciting to finally start getting the Moreton monkey off my back
Cheers
Rhys
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I did find a pack of Chart Pepper Neons, apparantly these were the go before the chooks? Im heading to the banks today so ill give em a bash. Nice catch too hope i have a similar result today 
Originally Posted by revs57
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