Fished the cleveland comp over the weekend and for a change we spent most of the comp fishing in the bay.All our fish came from the northern bay apart from our biggest snapper which came from outside.Conditions where not ideal with squally showers keeping us inside for the most part.We found the fishing a little slow for the first night and day with little to show for our efforts apart from a couple of medium size squire.But moving around and finding some good live bait found us some nice fish on the second afternoon.We came across a big school of slimies showering on the surface being chased up by something.So after jigging a few up we deployed one on my new Stella 8000/demonblood combo to once again put it through its paces.5 mins later it buckelled over and started screaming line off at a very fast pace!after a big first run I started to regain some line before pulling the hook from its mouth about 50m from the boat.So once again we deployed another slimy and 5 mins later it is destroyed again with a even more intense run then the first!after nearly getting down to the last 50m of line on my Stella once again the hooked pulled from its mouth.Devastated to say the least.We couldn't believe our luck!Third time round we realized the were quite large fish and being anchored was a little concerning considering we had come close to the bottom of the spool twice and couldn't chase these fish if we needed to so we came up with the plan of quickly unhitching the anchor rope and reversing on these fish on there initial run to stop ourselves being spooled.I am running pe4 on the Stella with a 60lb trace and had the drag set very tight.ok so attempt no 3!5mins later and we are hooked up again!drag screaming,line peeling off the reel at an alarming rate so anchor rope is released and boat in reverse and still struggled to stop the fish,turned the drag right up and crossed my fingers the 60lb leader wouldn't pop or pull the hooks again.After letting quite a bit of rope we managed to stay connected after the first run then 15mins later we had a 14kg longtail on the deck.We repeated this process 2 more times with similar results,another 14kg and 15.5kg longtails.Stoked!as it was getting late in the arvo we moved and concentrated on fishing for a snapper.We pulled 4 well conditioned snapper around the 3.5 to 4.1kg mark with 2 just under the 70cm limit and 2 over.we then headed home after seeing some dark clouds moving over as we were exposed in a centre console.so that was our comp done by the looks of the weather.but no a late call Saturday night was made to head offshore as the wind had dropped out completely.We struggled to get anything through the night of any comp standard size until first light we pulled a 4.6kilo snapper but soon heard news of the Brett seng snapper of 11kg!and new it was time to pull the pin.so we ended up with 1st and 2nd in the brutes and speedsters category for our longies and took home a few nice prizes
Reply With Quote
