Mixed bag from Harry's on Sunday...

[Damned67]

Hi All,
My son, Snag King, couldn't be bothered dragging his butt out of bed at 4.00am,so I took a solo run out to the car park known as Harry's. I often do well when ol' sausage king has other plans.
I got out there a little after 5.00, and there were already about 10-12 boats clustered together there. I'm not convinced that many boats have GPS marks or use their sounders, as everyone seems to motor into the group and drop anchor without any apparent sounding around?
Anyway, as per usual, I sounded around and dropped anchor on one of my oft used marks, a small distance north (?) from the whole group, and in went the RJazy burley cannister loaded with pilchard burley. Anyway, my plan of attack was to step up from the dredded two-rod curse to the three rod curse. I had a unwieghted/lightly wieghted plichard or squid out in the burley trail on my brand new bait runner, a 8-10kg rog running a paternoster rig for some very simple 'bottom bashing', and one of my plastics rods.
The paternoster was the thorn in my side. Within moments/minutes of it hitting the bottom, and sometimes even before it hit the bottom, I was hooked onto small undersized squire. A couple of 'close to legal' models thrown in, but all undersized. This went on for hours, all in the hope that a pan sized model would find one of my hooks desirable....
The SPs were relatively ignored due to being busy with my other rods, but I did manage a keeper squire of about 38cm on a 3" banana prawn. That was the only decent hit, and also made a tasty lunch.
The line floating in the burley trail was a bit of fun. Amongst the squire, I landed what I believe to be two juvenile Red Emperor. At one point that same line showed the lightest hit in the rod tip, only for the line to go slack.... Turns out something decided to inhale my ganged squid, and slice the line with surgical precision. It was barely touched as I don't think the free spool on the baitrunner even turned once. Anyway, that let me know something was out there....
About 10 min later, my paternoster rig absolutely screamed to life. Back in October, I landed a 78cm Snapper, and that one had nothing on this.... The rod was bent in half (8-10kg dropshot), and the Penn Slammer was being slammed. And it just kept running. Run after run. If it wasn't for the VERY pronouced 'bang, bang, bang' of the stereotypical Snapper headshake, I would have been calling it for something else, instead of crapping myself, imagining the size of the snapper on the end of the line.... Of course, my rapidly rising heart rate was soon tempered when the fish showed it's colours at the side of the boat. From the best I could tell, as it splashed around near the surface as I poorly tried to net it, it was a decent Mackeral. Tail hooked! That will certainly explain the thumping 'headshakes'!!!
Of course, first swipe with the net, as the nearest boat watched on with anticiaption, missed by a long shot. Second swipe was about 33 milliseconds too late, as the hook tore out of the tail. You'd think I'd be heart broken, you'd think people fishing down near the 'pin would have heard my exclamations of frustration, but no. As soon as I saw it was tail hooked, I figured I'd be lucky to get it in the net. That, and I obviously suck trying to net my own fish!
So, rebaited the rig and sent it back down.
While that same paternoster rig was quitely hooking those undersized pickers, my unweighted pillie finally went off. The baitrunner screamed in free spool mode. Just as I grabbed the rod, cranked the handle, and tried to set the hook, it all kinda stopped. There seemed to be a dead weight on the line, or at least nothing that was giving any fight. So I continued to reel the line back in expecting to rebait. It wasn't far off the side of the boat that Mr Mackeral realised he was hooked and went for a bit of a run!!! This one ran nothing like the tail-hooked model, and didn't seem to carry anywhere near the same weight. Regardless, in but a few moments I had my first, and legal, School Mackeral in the net and in the boat. He went a touch over 52cm, and tasted great fried in beer batter for lunch. So, I was happy, especially considering there was no trace or anything on that line, 10kg mono through to the hook!
Sorry for the lack of pics, but I figured no one really wanted to see pics of a barely legal squire and schoolie... Oh, and the Mac seemed so huge when I landed it, and somehow it looked so much smaller when I pulled it out of the esky, sans the adrenaline rush of landing it.
Oh, and sorry for the long post, it would seem I'm trying to avoid work!
Cheers!

[metal magician]

great read ,shame about the first mac , will have to get out and find them now there in the southern bay area!

[Ozie_3]

top read....them squire round 35 to 45 are great eating eh

plan trolling rainbow n rouse tomorrow...might fish harries on the pm low

cheers chris

[Damned67]

Yep, great eating!
That mackeral was pretty tasty too, I should add.

Last weekend there were lots of birds and fish busting up the surface right near Harry's. My son and I, and another boat tried getting into the action. Both of us would motor over, then pretty much try to idle/drift up to within casting distance. Pretty much each time we got close, this one other boat would literally run straight into the school, and from where we were, they looked like they were dropping baits down?

Anyway, not sure what they were. The one other 'smart' boat landed a fish, but we were too far away to see anything other than a silver flash. Could have been anything, and probably tailor?
Regardless, there seems to have been some pelagic action around there of late.

[Axl]

Well done Damned67 I am always keen to read a good story keep up the good work.