Ronnien and I headed to Westpoint of Saturday morning, launching his 4.3m barra boat at Pallerenda at 5.00am. We headed to s pot Ron marked as a man overboard on his last trip and stopped there til dawn only to get a stinkin grinner on a pilly. On day break we did a bit of trolling, with Ronnie picking up a doggie on a deep halco.
We moved out to a mark that was published in the Bulletin a few months ago and floating 1/2 pillies on a 60lb leader on a circle and wide gape hooks, ronnie dropped one boatside (undersize we kept telling ourselves) and I picked up one doggie which went straight into the esky. Things went quiet so we moved into Liver point where, using the same method, we got another undersize doggie and a small queenie, as well as a legal sweetlip, which also went into the esky. With the current really slowing and fish going off the bite we moved on from there and had a troll as we could see some gar being belted in the distance. Also I got the catch of the day, an old bottom half of a 2 peice rod with reel still attached, could make out what make.model they were because of the solid coverage of barnacles, coral, and algae, and with so many living organisms on it I thought it best to practice catch a release, as it was clearly not having any ill effects on the evironment.
After trolling for a bit for no result, we moved to another mark from the paper and anchored right over it, with heaps of bait and arches hanging off a bit of structure. We tried the same method for a couple of undersize nannygai, a yellow tail (which was promptly despatched on the handline for live bait), but not much else was happening. Ron got another doggie, which was again dropped boat side, this one well and truly legal and would've been good tucker. With nothing much else happening we started casting some slugs around when the handline took off........but by the time Ron grabbed it, what ever it was had dropped the bait and upon inspetion of the bait, there wasn't a mark on it, but there wasn't much life left in it, so it went back down to the bottom.
With nothing resulting from casting the slugs, I tired just sending them straight under the boat and ligging them, as thats where the fish were. A couple of jigs in and I was smashed on the drop and resulted in a bite off........so at least we knew where the mackeral were. Across the way was another boat, with 2 blokes not having much luck on the fish....sure they were hooking up, but out of about 10 hookups and 7-8 fish boatside, only 3 were boated, 2 doggies and a golden Trevally, with us laughing at their attempts to use a landing net about 1/2 the width required, it was clear that they were noices when it cam to gafing, with most fish lost. Any way back to our trip....
Ron dropped he's slug down and got a big hook up as I was tying a new one on, and witha good fight, botught up a golden trevally to about 7kg, with no landing net, I was under the pump, being only my second ever gaff shot, but pulled it off with out a hitch which was was chuffed with. So ron had a good trevally, and a couple of pics were taken and it went into the esky. Then we were back into it, jigging under the boat in 7m of water was something very new to me, but it was working on the day, so who am I to argue. Next I hooked up to a decent doggie which put up a good fight for it size, thanks to the treble in its side. Next few jigs resulted in a number of bite offs, with me losing about 4-5 metals and Ron 2. With no other chrome slugs in the tackle box we could raise any interest with buck tail jigs or any other colour slug.
The current had finally picked up and we thought the fishing would hot up a but more, but everything shut down so we had a quick troll across the mark for nothing and headed in for the day at 1pm, a lot later than we expexted but with a feed or 2 of fish in the esky, who really cares.
I did take a couple of pics, but they didn't turn out and aren't very clear so I won't put them up. Ron's got a couple of his trevally and my rod, if he wants to attache them later.
On a side note: Dad, my grandfather and Brother hit the Bohle yesterday as well for about 12 whiting, 4 grunter, a couple of bream and 4 big muddies. They also seen the croc from their last trip again.
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Originally Posted by levinge
