After having a great day on board with Rod, organised by Duncan from Fishhead, I decided to give it a crack for myself. After having my arms stretched and the loss of a lot of tackle the urge to do it again was too much. So started off by restocking the tackle and hitting up the guys at Fish Head for some below the border knowledge, did some research myself and it was on. Only waited till the following weekend and the weather looked the goods.
Headed of in search of new grounds, was positive, after last weeks trip and also I figured people had to live in NSW for some reason as it couldn't be to support their useless origin team
Got to the first mark and there was a boat near by so thought must have been in roughly the right area. First drift and I was onto a rat kingie so thought we might do alright for the day, was that an understatement. Next drift I get absolutely dusted up on my heavy gear Saltiga 6500 Expedition, 90lb braid and 300g maria rod. This got the boys pumped, a couple more drifts and I was on again this time I kept it off the bottom, the Saltiga was singing away again but just kept tightening the drag up and finally there was colour and it just kept getting bigger. Up to the surface pops up my new pb Kingie 19kg of mini submarine. Took a few quick photos, even one of the lie detector and let her go to torment someone else. I was buggered but pumped, only a week ago before rod's trip my pb was only about 8kg.
On the next couple of drifts Gordo and Mark both picked up some nice fish, we found a spot that came up to 20m's and if you could keep them of the bottom there was some good fish down there. Gordo got a new pb of 11.5kg and Mark upped his to 12kg. By this time I had recovered and dropped it down again, even with the drag up I got smoked again, there must be some biggins down there, but in 20m you don't have the odds on your side. Mark had a good size kingie follow his jig up to about 10m under the boat so he let it sit and got smashed, this is not a good idea when running 15kg of drag over an overhead, but it was good to watch him struggle, Gordo hooked up at the same time and both landed about 10kg models.
Was throwing poppers around for something different until a 8ft shark cleared the water a couple of times, near the boat, that would have only ended in tears (done it before)
We decided to head in closer to shore to have a pop around some other reefs but by then the wind had picked up and decided to call it a day. All in all and awesome day out, almost would have spent more time travelling in the car then in the boat, but was well worth it for only a half day of fishing.
Andrew
