Ballina 20th

[banshee]

The forecast looked prety good last night so this morning saw the young fella and myself off Ballina with the intention of stretching our arms on some Kingies.After floging the first three marks with a range of jigs for one solitary red of about 4kg that fell off boatside and no Kings we resorted to bait and found smallish pearlies in near plague numbers,we got our ten after about half an hour and what must have been thirty throw backs and despite a pig fish and a few mowies nothing else would play,not another red to be seen.Another move to a jigging mark down the coast a bit had some small kingies playing the game with double hookups every pass untill the youg bloke suffered one of the best wipeouts I've seen (they're always good to witness when it's not your forty dollar jig that gets stitched into the bottom),the fish hit the jig 55m from the bottom and against full drag on an Ishidai just accelerated into the reef,after that the fish scatered and try as I might I couldn't find them again.At about 10 o'clock what little wind that was there all but dissapeared and the drift was virtualy non existent,time for one of those rare occasions down here when you can fish the shelf with a sensible amount of lead so out to a mark I've got that drops off from 200m to 465m in the space of about 50 metres,we had no trouble finding bottom right out to the bottom of the ledge with a kilo of lead and at the end of the second drop the young bloke got a nice Blue Eye up out of 460 odd metres,seeing how it took about fifteen minutes to get the winches up from that depth four short drifts was enough and I went fishless.It was a great day on the water with some good fish to eat and some kingies taged and sent on they're way.

[banshee]

The young blokes Blue Eye out of 460m

[banshee]

Just noticed I put this in the wrong section,sorry.

[Tony_N]

Good to read your report Banshee That blue-eye is a beaut. I've never seen one of those. I'm assuming it is a trevalla? I can't find a pic of it in Grant's book.

As you know the guys out wide at Evans did OK on sunday with similar conditions prevailing. Lots of kingies and some good pearlies were weighed in. (I wonder what they do with the kingies?) I fished on Blue Wahoo and we fished in close - mostly at the Italian Grounds. There was a heap of muck in the water, like very fine cornflake weed from surface to bottom. We worked almost all of John's marks down there for no fish. 4 or 5 hours later we moved further out to escape the weed (?) and found it a bit lighter at the camels humps. Just a few trag(5) and a tusky for our troubles.

Anyway, I'm off to Townsville next week and the fishing should pick up - weather permitting. We've got a place booked at Lucinda for a few days as well. I'm really keen to get back into those big barries (not barras, spanish) and to get stuck into as many meals of trout as I can.

cheers

Tony

[banshee]

Yes Tony known as Blue Eye Trevalla or Blue Eye Cod first one I've seen in the flesh also and supposed to be prety good on the tooth (I'll know after tonight).
I know what your saying about the Kingies and Aj's,the club is very short sighted and has a closed mind when it comes to change,their comp is very much a numbers game.I'm not sorry I gave them the flick.
Mate Townsville sounds good and I hope the weather plays the game for you,I suppose some ones got to do it and if it's not me it might as well be you,have a good time.

[Squiggle]

Yep, be careful of what could be cyclone Nelson...odds are he shouldn't create a problem but stranger things have happened with our weather lately.