G'day raiders,
Sorry about the title but for all of those that travel up here it is our slogan!
Anyway, headed out this morning with the new young apprentice from work and I thought I'd give little scratchie jnr a day off school and he came to! We set off from shoal bay about 630 and rounded the corner to less than 1m swell and no wind, agh perfect! Went to cabbage tree and picked up a heap of livies in no time. There was plenty of boats collecting bait, so I didn't want to waste time and headed straight to the sisters. We got there and there was no one there.???? So I started by trolling livies whilst I was sounding out the bottom. No luck on the troll but managed to find a few nice marks. So the drift was set and we began to throw a few sp's and baited hooks. It wasn't long before we had a few little pannies and a heap of reef fish. In fact, jnr probably could have started his own aquarium. So there was a bit of action but not what I wanted. So I changed to my secret weapon of prawn on a jighead. I casted out waited and felt tap tap, damn another picker but then all of a sudden zzzzzzzzzzzzz and this thing took off like a rocket. A 10min fight ensured which included us chasing this fish and then a great netting effort by jnr and it was all over!
The young apprentice had never heard line scream off the reel like that before and he wanted some action. Unfortunately, there were no more big boys to come and play but he still managed a couple of pannies and nice sized tarwhine.
We changed a few locations like north rock, cod rock and west head but the same result at each with undersized snapper and reefies. The sun was too high so we headed deep but by now the wind had kicked in and made drifting a bit difficult. We decided to head for home and were shown the way by a pod of dolphins playing in the bow waves. So I thought I'd charge the apprentice a little more for the dolphin watch tour!
So we arrived back at the islands out the headlands and with a bit of time to spare I thought we'd have a bit of a troll with some deep divers. The water is still showing only 20.0deg so I didn't think there would be much about but one rod goes off and jnr was the quickest to it. A great little fight for the young fella and what did he catch??? Well to my surprise, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure its an amberjack!
We called it a day after that and was back at home with the boat and gear washed down by 2pm. What a great day on the water! How good is Port Stephens and we haven't even got to the marlin season yet!
Thanks for reading,
Cheers scratchie!!!