kingiemaster

Not hard at all. just need to walk west along the cliff face and make your way down to the lower sections in the valley a 100 meters east of "old mans hat". You get to the cliffs from the carpark at the top of North Head and walk down the old wall. The platform is by no means a secret especially now that it's been in MGcill's latest vid with Alex Blessimo. Those in the know fish exclussively for blackies and pigs with floats. Newcomers get all excited and throw out a few an ounces of lead only to get snagged in a matter of seconds. I know there are more comfortable places to fish for blackies but I like it because it's more or less guaranteed and there's always a chance for a good drummer. Surface fish sometimes come in close enough for a cast as well.

Was planning on going for a fish in Middle harbour on my mates boat for our inaugural KingieKup 07/08 round but he decided call it off the night before. So I went for a fish down at Old Mans Hat on Saturday instead. Got down there at about 11am to fish the outgoing tide. Conditions were comfortable with very little wind and very little swell. Shorts and shirt weather. Things were quiet to begin with only one down in the first half hour but things started to pick up when the tide started moving. The guy that was fishing opposite me on another ledge started getting into the blackies in quick succession and getting busted off by pigs. So I threw my float in closer to his burley trail and my cabbage bait got nailed. After a bit of tussle on 4kg in rather shallow rocky country I had a nice drummer on the rocks that went just over 40 cm. After that I struggled to keep my float in the zone as the wind was picking up so I went to fish side by side with my new friend. By this stage he was really getting into them, one after the other. He was using healthy green weed he collected from Curl Curl rather than cabbage and was nice enough to give me some. I ended up landing a couple of blackies and had the hook pull on a couple others. By the end of the session he must of caught at least 15, the biggest was easily over 40 cm. But he didn't land any pigs so I felt vindicated by that. So having been cast off by my KingieKup mate I ended up having a nice afternoon with a new fishing buddy. Took the fish home and fried some of it up using my special recipe. Flesh was perfect having had problems recently with rubbery flesh. Hopefully my next post will be me holding a nice King. Dave

I have been cathcing blackies all season (all from Northhead) and have had the same problem with rubbery flesh. I thought it might be how I was cooking them ie baking or grilling etc or the ingriedents ie garlic, pasley etc but having tried many variations over the past couple of months I still experiencing the rubbery flesh problem. Size of the fish doesn't seem to change this either. I now think it might be the weed they eat this time of year or somehing to do with spawning as I don't seem to have this problem in the spring or summer. I plan to do more sessions over the next couple of months before I get stuck into the Kings in the harbour fulltime, so I'll keep you posted and test my theory.