Benzeenees

good idea! why didn't I think of that?

we also bagged out on flathead both days. And on Friday the current was really moving so I wouldn't be surprised if the kingfish were on at Montague.

sorry, no pics. They don't really photograph well after they are bled. All the colour goes. And I only had my phone anyway. Very difficult in bright light.

Vacuum packing is great for fish, but sometimes the heat sealing machines fail to seal because of the fish juice getting in the seal area. At a recent agricultural show I saw a different system that uses re-usable ziplock bags. Each bag has a valve built into it and air can be removed using either a hand pump or an electric pump. I actually prefer the hand pump. There is a demo on this website. www.vacsealit.com.au I am not in any way associated with this product. I believe there are similar systems marketed by other companies including ziploc. The bags are fairly expensive but can be reused many times. On tip though. Don't use the bags for smoked fish unless you are going to reuse them with smoked fish. Its impossible to get all the smoke colour and smell out of the plastic.

Went out to the Batemans Bay FAD (17km from Mossy Point) on Friday and Saturday. The water temperature was 24C on Friday but had dropped to 22C on Saturday. Caught 5 dollies to about 70cm on Friday fishing on my own. The fish were biting aggressively on live yakkas. Took a dollie virgin out on Saturday and he got 2 just-legal fish. Saturday was very quiet and one of the other boats got a big zero! First time ever he said. Had mahi mahi for dinner on Friday - seared on the bbq. We also had one piece from a trip in early March. Frozen in a vacuum pack. Couldn't pick it from the fresh stuff! So much for frozen mahi mahi being only useful for berley!

Sorry no photos worth posting. It was dark when we got back!

Headed to Narooma again 28-30 June and 1 July, with brothers Gerry and Paul. Paul's brother in-law chose not to join us as he likes to sleep late! The bar was perfect all 4 days. Up early for the 1 hour drive on day 1. No kings but bagged out on flathead. Day 2 we collected 2 kings and more flathead. A lot of our yakkas were taken by seals. After noticing a professional boat heading out late we decided to sleep in on day 3 and fish the afternoon. Actually we were on the water by about 10am. Yakkas were hard to come by so we used squid heads and strips of sales bonito and ended up with 5 kingfish to about 82 cm. Plus a few flathead, a couple of small snapper and a longfin perch. This was a new species for us. We motored back to Narooma at dusk and cleaned our fish by the light of a torch. Day 4 was a duplicate of day 3. Yakkas even more scarce, but we had a couple of packets of cuttlefish tentacles. These proved to be dynamite! We ended up with 3 flathead, 3 snapper, a longtime perch and 7 kings to 84cm. Plus a small bonito while trolling out to the island. This time we had head torches to help with fish cleaning and a change of clothes so we could get dinner at a nearby club without panicking the locals. In 2014 the brothers were successful with snapper to 13kg at Whyalla but reckon that kings are a much more exciting proposition.

Well done - certainly a lot bigger than the ones we caught at Montague. How will you cook them?

Tried once recently in beer batter along with some kingfish. Both were great.

My pump sits inside the boat with the inlet thru the back of the transom. The inlet is well under the water even when on the plane. Even though my pumps are only lasting a year or so, they're probably running for 300 - 600 hours before playing up.

The candles are the long tentacles they use to grab their prey. Similar to, but bigger than, the ones on squid. They feel very tender and are probably great to eat. But fish think so too. So they are bait. Ink. You haven't seen ink until you've seen what a giant cuttlefish produces. The first time I caught one and cut it up I released the ink all over the cleaning table. It took heaps and heaps of water and time to clean up the mess! And if you do catch one, make sure you have a sharp knife. The skin on these things is slippery and tough.

We cut off the tentacles and candles for bait and the flesh around the mantle for cooking. From experience the mantle flesh doesn't seem to go that well as bait - maybe it has to be rotten before fish like it. Last year I cut some of the mantle flesh very thin - like the wall of a squid tube - and cooked it with some squid as salt and pepper calamari. Delicious - you couldn't pick the cuttlefish from the squid. Just coated in plain flour with lots of salt and black pepper added. Then into hot canola oil for about 1 minute.

One of the brothers has a photo of the bonito head! But the photos of the kings had a big blob of water in the middle of the pictures. I'll see what I can do.

I'll take the 90 degree bend off. But the pumps do work very well for about 1 - 2 years, so I don't think I have a leak or a problem with the pickup coming out of the water. Towards the end, each pump motor keeps running and like Welst, if I turn it off, then on, it works for a while. But as I'm pretty deaf, I end up with a tank of dead "livies" (or are they deadies?).