It had been a long time since I had taken the 4.8 center console out wide to get it dirty so I thought it was about time. The last bunch of trips I had been out on were with JT and even though I always enjoy fishing with JT you get to a point where you start to miss being in control. By that I mean driving and positioning the boat and also fiddling with the electronics, so I passed up an opportunity with JT and got the 4.8 set up for offshore.
I was looking a bit sad there for a deckie until I met up with good mate brenden at school drop off. I asked him what he was doing here as he was supposed to be on shift. “Nah took it off”, he said. “Well that’s great, want to go fishing tomorrow?” and that was that as I now had a deckie.
We left the Rosslyn Bay ramp early to try for an early grunter bite. We would head up around the pinnacles which is about 40km’s north, try for a grunter, then jig some livies and then head north east to try for some reefies.
We arrived at our mark in quick time with minimal swell. We were quick to get baits down and pretty much hooked up straight away. I landed an undersize grunter which was a great sign and on the next drift Brenden put our first keeper in the boat which made us relax a bit more. The very next drop and I got smashed. Some big strong runs straight up had me calling shark but then it slowed and started to put in those big thumping headshakes. I changed my tune to cod before a big pinkish body lay boatside. I looked around for the gaff but couldn’t see it so the hands went straight in the gills and pulled it onboard. Both myself and Brenden were in shock as it was a great capture while we were chasing grunter. 9.5kg of large mouth nannygai had us high fiving and on the mat he went. 87cm and a new PB and it was taken on the new squirtz fly from PE Tackle.
We spent the next few hours adding to our tally of grunter before we started jigging livies.
With good shows our spirits were high but we were disappointed as they were hard to come by. We wound up with about 8 pike and a couple of these mongrel looking things which had a bit of go about them and were shiny so we put them in the tank with the pike.
We were flying on the way out to the reef with already a great feed secured in the esky. Imagine our surprise when we started drifting the fern country and struggling to lose bait and get bites. The next 2-3 hours were like this and all I could think is we should have stayed at the wreck and get some more grunter. We found a new bit of ground in the dog leg/cock & balls area (a local name for a gps contour) and I had clean forgot about the pike. Well the dead baits weren’t working so I put a pike down. Immediately it got nailed and up comes a nice trout. I put another on and up comes a red throat. By this time Brenden goes “stuff this give me one of those” and before long he is hooked up as well. Imagine our surprise when a red hits the surface and was hauled aboard. We pretty much turned each one of those pike into a decent fish until we had the mongrel looking things left.
I put one down and do you think I could get a hit on it…..heck no. After a while we decided to hit one final mark on the way home which was a wreck. I looked at the final live mongrel and said to Brenden “do you want this” as I was going to through it over the side. “Yeah give it here” he said. We drifted across the wreck and received not much interest at all. We were well away from it when Brenden mentioned “these bloody mongrel things must be the pox of the ocean” and right on cue he got smashed. Thumping headshakes had us hoping and Brenden was rewarded with a final red emperor for the trip. We did piss our selves laughing that it was caught on the “mongrel thing” and it topped off a great day on the water.
Pic of the wreck we pulled this red off
The livies definitely saved us out wide this trip with nothing interested in our dead bait, not even the hussar which drive us mad normally. The squirtz flys I was using from PE Tackle went really well and also nailed there fair share of grunter, I was also impressed with the hookup with the new prescion point hooks they were rigged on. Overall it was a fantastic trip with great company and it was great to get the center console back in the game and I love it when a plan comes together. Cheers.
overall result of the day
Reply With Quote
VHF CHANNEL 21
Originally Posted by XtremeBoony
were tuff as nails