Forecast for Saturday looked pretty good so plans were made to head out to 12 mile and chase some kings.... Well as they say the best laid plans of mice and men! ! ! !
Started well with the boat in the water before 6.00 and headed to Balmoral to fill up the live bait tank before heading out. Then it started to go wrong. We anchored up and started with the berley...hum no yakkas, kept berleying still no yakkas, All we managed was a reasonable sized Trevally. After best part of an hour we gave up. Plan to hit 12 mile out the window. 😞
Plan 2. Head out to the reefs as we did have bait on board. Started out the front of Manly drifting around and got minimal bites, one of the boys pulled in a 40cm Snapper but other than that only the odd Sargent Baker and rock cod.
That was pretty much how to day went from then on, we tried multiple spots from Manly up to Long Reef and were hardly getting touched. By the time we got to Long Reef wide, around 11.00 we still only had the one snapper. Managed a reasonable Nannygai and 1 keeper Flathead on the wide drift but overall it was one of the quietest days that I have ever experienced. Spoke to a few other boats and that seemed to be the consensus all round. One of them had been to 12 mile and come back in to Long Reef as 12 mile was dead as well. So at least we were not the only ones not landing fish.
The main highlight of the day was seeing a few dolphins and lots of whales. One small pod of whales just off Manly put on a fantastic display of breaching and tail slapping around 100m from us for around 20 minutes which was wonderful to watch.
Ah well, better luck next time. 🙂