G’day lads,
With filthy weather in Sydney all long weekend I was champing at the bit for an offshore run. Finally the seas settled down yesterday and Richard, Dan and I mustered at Apple Tree ramp at 7.00AM.
I’d heard of an interesting new downrigging technique, and that was first on the agenda. The bloke fishes Port Phillip Bay with the weights dragging on clean sand or mud, and sets a four inch squidgie on a short drop back. Flathead – not the smartest fish in the sea, but very alert to an easy feed – think the puffs of sand from the weight are a ray or shovel nosed shark feeding, and hit the soft plastic aggressively. He’s been killing it with this technique down there. Check this flathead video out- pretty amazing stuff:
But it didn’t work for us. I should have realised that, with all the rain over the last week, the water would be full of muck. We tried off Umina Beach but weed continually fouled both the lure and the lines:
It was time for option two. We set a course for Texas Reef, 23 nautical miles north-east of Broken Bay. On arrival Dave G was already on station in his black centre console and mentioned he had seen some guys on a charter boat hooked up. I moved north to my favourite spot. No kings were marking on the sounder but there was plenty of other fish swarming on the hump. Surely a king had to be there.
And so it was. Richard opened the innings with this beaut 95cm/8 kilo king:
Short video of it being landed here:
But generally, the kings were few and far between. Dan and I boated a couple of just legals plus five or six bonito, and Richard lost another stonker when his line parted.
This just legal went back over the side:
There were several other boats on the reef but we only saw one other king landed. Cheers, Andy
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Originally Posted by nigelr
