a good king jigging session last weekend

[Steve Carruthers]

Howdy guys, just thought I'd post up a bit of a report on a good day Chooky (Tony Fowler) and I had a week ago.
We both live and fish out of Port Stephens. The gun king jigging spot is 40km out on the edge of the continental shelf in about 190 metres of water. So it has to be a very good weather prediction for us to head out. We only get a few months late winter and spring to hit the kings out there when the east Australian current isn't ripping along. Last saturday looked good on seabreeze.com the night before so we headed out in my 6m platey. There was a bit of swell but with no wind on it, it was all good.
First drop a small patch of fish showed on the sounder and Chooky hooked up. Then I got nailed too. My first fish was the unluckiest king in the ocean. The jig fell out of the fish on gaffing and a closer look at the assist hook showed the clear plastic sleeve still over the point hahhaa.
We hooked up pretty well every drop and had a blast. The fish ranged from 6 up to 12kg. They nailed anything we dropped down which was mostly Smith nagamasa 280 grammers and river to sea 300 gram knifes.
I'd just installed a new Lowrance HDS8 and was mighty impressed with it's maiden performance. We were marking fish in 190 metres of water without any tweeking and had a clear picture of the bottom at all speeds. Very happy.
At one stage we had humpbacks breaching near the boat during a double hookup, it doesn't get any better than that hey!
I was using a smith amj with a 20000 stella and Chooky was mixing it up a bit between his smith nirai and daiwa expedition rig and a nitro godzilla (I think) with a saltiga 4500. The poor old nitro is no jigging rod of course and spent a lot of time buckled over!
Bye, Steve.
   

[Sam Conacher]

any photos?

[Scott Maybury]

Sounds like an awesome session mate, well done

I fished what I am fairly confident is the same spot a few weeks ago (we made the trip up from Sydney for the day, was a long day!) We had 6 anglers on board and the best we could manage was 5 of us fishing and 5 hooked up...we saw 8 whales including a humpback about 20m from the boat as well

Our fish ranged from 60cm (there were only 2 undersized rats all day, amazing) to 14kg with an average size around the 6-8kg, really good quality fish

Don't mean to hijack your post but since some photos have been requested and our sessions sound similar, thought I would put up a few

[Steve Carruthers]

Howdy Scott, looks like you had a great day too mate. The conditions in the background of your pics look pretty sweet.
It was probabaly the same spot mate, most in the know head straight there. We haven't found any likely looking grounds closer to port unfortunately.
Sorry no pics, I guess we've got a bit spoilt and don't take pics of kings any more.

[Scott Maybury]

Yeah man the conditions we had that day were awesome, it was just a terrific day out

[Nathan Cefai]

Nice work mate,ive fished that spot many times off port stephans..Deep water hard work and sometimes the occasional Bar cod and blue eyes and big snapper..

[Cam Foley]

Nice work lads ,you have got to get yourself over to NZ to tackle kings ,you will love it

[Scott Maybury]

Hey Cam, I fished with Carl from Epic Adventures in Tairua earlier this year, was Epic indeed...some of the boys were just over there and got heaps of kingies with quite a few between 20 and 30kg, and when they were taking breaks it was 5-6kg snapper on plastics

Too choice bro

[Cam Foley]

Carl does a great job on finding the big kings, shot down to Cape Runaway the other day fishing was a bit tough, the water was quite dirty with all the rain we have had and snow on hills, managed a few kings around the 20kg range.

[Scott Maybury]

Very nice mate, those 15kg+ models go well, I didn't get my arms stretched on a 20kg+ but got to watch a few get landed and they are just brutes

[David Leonard]

Sounds like a great session Steve.  40km's to the edge of the shelf.....you guys are lucky.  Fortunately here in QLD we can catch the big buggers in 40m of water.  Less work on the arms.

Cheers
Dave