GoingFishing

I agree with Teflon sounds like you came across a stripey ! Too bad the hooks didn't stick. At least you managed a few for dinner ! I hear that getting to the FADS as early as possible is the way to go before all the crowd arrives

Cheers mate, just offering up some friendly advice in case u want to try botany again sometime on ur own Yeah the landscape is very different to sydney harbour I think botany is a lot harder to fish personally

Well done mate great effort. Those Mahi will be great eating

Well done swordie ! That's an awesome fish And by the looks of that jig head the fish almost own it's freedom, wasn't much life left in that jig so you must have played it very well Congrats

Thanks fellas I was very surprised to catch one let alone catch one so close in. I've read some reports that they come into broken bay during the summer months, though I haven't seen any reports this year so far I'm stuck as to how to cook them ! I have two away and kept one. My family don't do sashimi so I'm wondering if anyone has recommended recipes ?? Any advice would be greatly appreciated Cheers Sam

Nice catch of fish there Ryder. Well done I fish botany regularly and find the hot water outlets fire up on the last two hours of the run in tide which I think was around midday today. I also find trolling around Cape banks and bare island out and around towards little bay a lot more productive than trollin in the bay. Good to see you gave the bay a go as a lot of people write it off. It just needs some experimentation

Gday Raiders Headed out from botany this morning nice and early, the forecast was for 1 to 1.2m swell but it looks like they got it wrong, there were swells well over 2m out from Botany this morning though it did calm off as the day went on. Considered turning back at one point. Trolled the cliffs from botany to coogee hoping from some Bonito but end up doughnuts. the sounder looked pretty baron too. Then i anchored up in 20m of water, literally had dozens of yakkas feeding at my burley bucket. I thought this wasnt a good sign as this probably meant no predators were around. lifted anchor and reluctantly decided to try the FAD. water temp was 25.5 right from about 1km offshore all the way to the FAD and Peak. Got to the FAD to find about 10 boats floating around, there were dollies around and i saw about a dozen boated all good size most seemed legal. Unfortunately i wasnt lucky and got zero hits on live baits, pillies, and my lures which i trolled around for half an hour. decided to give up and head home, thought id slow troll with the lures just for fun. about 3 miles out from Botany heads the christmas tree got hit HARD, the fish then proceeded to go on a really long, long run. the fight was on and the fish felt like nothing ive cought before, long hard runs followed by stubborn circling under the boat refusing to lift its head, no acrobatic jumps so i assumed not a Mahi. Finally got the fish boatside and it turned out to be my first ever stripey, STOKED, one of new years fishing resolutions ticked off.. The fish came in at 60cm and boy do these tiny torpedos put up a good fight. On 20 pound mono and 4500 reel they were awesome fun so i can only imagine how they would be on lighter gear. Decided to troll the area and picked up 2 more, all fish cought on the Christmas tree, after that headed home in time for a late breakfast with the Mrs. great day though the weather could have been better. Cheers Sam

I have miraculously obtained approval from the wife for an early morning fish on both Saturday and Sunday and I'm absolutely itching to wet a line. So Sat is botany and sun il try the harbour for the first time in a while !

Nice catch are gars any good eating ?

This one definitely takes the cake for me !! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2SBtUYS-exo Or this one hahaha https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MGnSrUlpXR4

Cheers Scratchie that's reassuring ! Thanks for the advice ! Perhaps we can team up for a fish and say hello ! PM me if you free up

Hi all Heading down to port Stephens in the next couple of days, hoping to fish inside the bay only. It's the first time I go down with the boat, just wondering if there's any tips for where I can keep my boat other than outside on the road and if so, any advice to prevent vandals or theft. Is the area normally good in that regard ?

Holy cow "banjo shark as bait"...... Yeah I'm not sure if that's a gun kingie bait haha

Hi mate I have sent u a pm That's a nice big tarwhine, too bad that bream got away

I did try that once and found my hit/hookup rate took a steep decline, almost all my hookups have the front treble through the side of the mouth. I find tieing a heavier flourocarbon leader on a uni to uni knot of say 40lb keeps a stiff hold at the nose and prevents the line from bending and tangling up the leader. This has it's benefits but also it's downsides, though admittedly if your using good quality leader the fish rarely seem to mind and I can't say using a heavier leader has reduced my catch rate

Hi Teflon I assume your talking about the Bonito, I normally throw 2 shallow and one deep diver out. The lure I use for Bonito is a Yeptide LM-110 in a variety of colors. Theyre a great all rounder and I find them to be very reliable. Ive caught Bonito, Mahi Mahi, Salmon and Tailor on this lure. Depending on your speed they go from 0-2m deep. I troll at about 4-5 knots so theyre normally about a meter below the surface. best of all, you can pick them up for about $8-$9 each.

great effort mate sounds like you had a load of fun and went home with a feed, that's what its all about

Tony That's an interesting response. Everytime I ask for a eating quality I almost always get a range of answers with yes/no. I guesses that's normal and expected considering every person has their own taste.

Cheers fellas it was a great day out. MV Sunray I did see the driveway closed on the way out from the ramp around 12pm the security had to move some witches hats for me to get out. Thanks for the fish ID gents, not sure I'm up for a "shit sandwich" haha so I'm glad I let those fellas go

Gday Raiders Ive had a pretty busy weekend so haven’t had time to post up this report until now. Decided to fish out from Botany Bay with two of my wifes cousins ( Brownie Points in the bag) who have done a-lot of land based fishing but never from the boat. The plan was to catch their first king and both were very excited. The forecast conditions were for up to a meter swell and 5-7 knot winds, and for once they got it right, it was an absolute cracker of a day on the water with perfect conditions apart from the single rogue wave/breeze every hour or so. Got to the boat ramp at Foreshore Rd at 5am to find a que about 10 boats long ! whoaw, understandably i wasn’t the only one excited by the forecast. Launched about 20 mins later and headed to the tug boats for livies, we tried for yakkas for about 30 minutes and could only get absolutely HORSE size yakkas easily 30-35cm each. Ive tried fishing large yakkas before as livies and have had little success. So headed out with only one livie between the three of us. We were past cape banks at 6 and headed straight for the FAD, i originally didn’t want to go to the FAD because the last time i was there it was full of rat dollies but thought it would be fun for the first timers. About 1km away the FAD we found warm water sitting at about 23.4 degrees and threw out the lures. We trolled around the FAD for an hour without a touch. Strange considering this time last week it was infested. We then headed over to the Peak and tried sounding up some bait balls in the hope of jigging for some kings, we moved around for a good hour and only found one bait ball which quickly disappeared and i couldn’t find it again. Three other boats stopped by and none had found anything or had any luck either. This was around 8am so i dont know if anyone had any luck later in the day on Saturday. So having failed at the FAD & The Peak i thought i could save face by heading over to the cliffs and trolling for Bonito, headed straight for the cliffs off Coogee and started trolling south back towards Botany, about 5 minutes later we got hit and as expected by a Bonito which put up a great fight on the light gear. We continued to troll the area and end up with 3 Bonito. I could see enormous amounts of fish on the sounder so i threw the anchor in and burleyed hard to see what wed find. What happened after this was a day never to be forgotten. Bonito, Rat Kings, Massive Sweep, Trevally and mix of other fish all feeding under the boat easily visible. No sooner had our baits hit the water than they were being torn to shreds by what seemed to be starving angry fish. Single hook ups, double hook ups and even at one point a triple hook up. I decided to throw a small ball sinker on each line to try and get the baits past the sweep ( always first in line). There were some big fish down there though we got bust off every single time by the larger specimens. We must have boated 11 rat kings and got bust off just as many times. No legal kings for dinner but we did end up taking home 4 Bonito, 1 Trevally and two very happy passengers who both managed their first kingie. Only rats but still awesome fun none the less. We also cought two fish which ive never seen before can anyone ID these fish please?, the green with black dots and Mr Angry with the big spine and velociraptor teeth? I returned these two to the water as i don’t know the eating quality ( if any ) and as I couldn't positively ID them I couldn't identify a legal size limit. It looks like most people had an awesome weekend out which is great to hear. Cheers GoingFishing

Hi mate , I think everyone just called them "the drums" haha You can also find them off cape banks and as PREDATOR said burley them up

Holy crap that's one huge squid Sounds like u had a good day out, the rat kings are good fun

G'day Raiders I hope everyone is looking forward to this years fishing and that Mother Nature floods our oceans and rivers with ginormous numbers of our finned friends. Last year I set myself some personal fishing goals and am reasonably happy to have succeeded on most. 1. Break at least two PB's 2. Save up for and buy a boat 3. Catch my first jewfish 4. Catch my first legal snapper 5. Learn ( and get reasonably good at ) squidding I managed to tick off 1,2 and 3 last year ! So this year id like to tick off the remaining two items as well as a new one, save up for and buy a Bimini cover for my renegade. So.... I'm really interested to hear what others have planned for this year ? !

Great catch mate those other fish look more like tailor than salmon

Hi Mate I find that hook through the nose works best, as naturally they get eaten head first. If your fishing under a float, don't cast too far. Instead open the bail arm for a minute or two and let the bait drift out away from the boat, that should stop the hook from coming out.