Fun spear today

[mattooty]

Went for a nice dive in a spot I've always looked at but never jumped into. My god how stupid I had been, within the first 5 minutes of being in the water a school of soapie-sized jew came shooting through a channel. Good start.
Spent the majority of the time doing a bit of a reco mission and found alot of good hides and ledges which I'll no doubt be going to next time.
Found about a dozen lobsters, extracted 4 but all were undersized.
Got 2 nice abalone and narrowly missed a shot on a bit black drummer. Oh well, thats what you get!
Its just unreal exploring a new area and even better when it turns out to be a bit of a gem!

[bennykenny]

so tell us all where was it?????

[SLB]

good stuff mat, should hold some big jew for ya next time

[Benno1]

good on you for getting back in the big blue Matt!!!...next trip will be a better one for you now youve been there done that mate...nice one

Mrs Benno1
Sunny

[nigelr]

This is what spearfishing is all about eh Matt?
My son and I did a similar thing, explored a new area of our usual haunt, last time we dived. We can't wait to get back out there!
Now just need some good conditions, the water has been filthy for at least the last 2 months down here, hopefully we will get a few good days at before the spring-time NE's set in.
Good time of year atm for mulloway aggregation, IMHO..........
Cheers!

[kokomo]

Yeah thats great.... good on you get out there.

[mattooty]

Where are you based at Nigelr? Thats how the water's been like down here, had an epic fresh come through the rivers about late February, water was rotten for a month or 2 then just as it was cleaning up had a week of nice water before the whole system flooded. Surprisingly though the flood waters cleaned up faster than a small fresh did!
Sam, the bloke who showed us the area also showed us his photo's of jew from the same area, fish to 78lbs and more 20-30lb fish than you can care to look at!

[nigelr]

Down at Coffs mate. Water clarity has been attrocious here, we had 3 floods in less than 3 months!
On the plus side the banks will be epic for surfing in a few weeks when the sand taken offshore by the floods comes back inshore and shapes up.
Mulloway are what the young bloke and I mainly target, being reef-hoppers. Personally I prefer the 5-10kg models for the table, easier to be sure of a capture and I believe there are far more fish that size than the bigger ones. A big jewie is an awesome sight underwater, we saw one one arvo we first thought was a dolphin! I would say it was over 35kg easy. The young bloke wanted to shoot it, but I stopped him attempting it, we were under-gunned to take such a big fish, and they get a bit tough over 12kg or so IMHO. Happy to say he eventually saw my point of view, no point injuring such a beaut fish just for the sake of taking an (ineffective) shot at it.
We are hoping to take the next step up to bluewater and pelagics in the near future, this season was a wash-out, but if the predicted El-Nino occurs this spring, we should get clean waters next summer/autumn.
Cheers mate, good luck and enjoy!

[nickstock]

Thats what it is all about nigel,

I have the same motto, if you can not kill it dont bother. Plus some giants of the deep are good enough to appreciate alive

Nick

[mattooty]

Yeh, I'm just north of you mate at Yamba but the spot I dived at was a bit south.
I've only seen one big jew so far and that would have been around the 25kg mark sitting in a gutter when I was diving for crays and had no gun with me!

[SLB]

NIce i love looking at big jew underwater, if ya come up again mat will have to go for a jew rock hop, i got some mean spots now that almost always produce and one spot will really impress you big fish hold there. good for records or wall mount cast not to eat hhahaha i havn't taken one yet i think they have gotten use to me its kinda of weird LOL i consider them my pets now, but they do go hard on lure

talk soon mate

[SLB]

oh here is some incntive for the trip up hhahaha, oh and how the mid winter jack at one of my spots you'll love it. oh and some mean sub marines get around here to in winter you should come up for LBGaming sesh

sam

[mattooty]

where are you based at now bro?

[SLB]

where are you based at now bro?

hey mate, still brissy for now but head back home almost every weekend.

[mattooty]

A fish is definately on the cards soon then.
PM what area.