Phar Cue

Nice catch. A 2.6 short length for a Blue should actually be about 160-170kg on the GFAA scale. Looking at the above photo it's not far off and she is fat. It looks about twice the size of the fella lying next to it. So if he is @80kg, you would argue it is twice his bulk. So well done on a stonker from a tinny!! This Blue below also died on landing and went 121kg and looks a lot smaller than yours. So start the bickering....

Is this the same Spotted Mackerel you caught?

Shepster We headed SW then north and ended up being due east of Bermi between the shelf slope and drop off, probably 23NM out. I think we were the closest in who got fish.

No comparison. SBT have a great first run or 2 then bog down and give up. The 45kg fish came in just under 10 minutes. YFT on the otherhand are a real handfull. A 50kg YFT we got last season took an hour. And popper was a typical GT popper about 10inces long, cant remember the brand.

Heard rumours the Southern Blue Fin were on at Bermi last week so made a quick and risky decision to drive down to what all the fuss was about. Trolled from shelf to continental drop off for about 4 hours and didn't turn a reel. Then came back in close the the shelf. Not one run! Was about to pack it in when I thought stuff it lets cube. Not a boat in site but heard boats were hooked up north of us. 20 minutes into the cube the 24kg goes off and we are AWAY! 10 minutes an we deck a 45kg specimen. My mate lobs a pillie out and he is away. 35 kg fish. I grab the Saltist and lob out a big popper and 2 winds on the reel and i'm away. Another 35kg fish. Mate hooks another about 30kg which we release. There are barrell size tuna all around the boat. Every cube that went in would go down 2-3 meters and bang fish would hammer it. Had the fish around the boat for over an hour and no other boat in sight. Got 2 more 35kg fish on poppers. You have never seen anything until you see these fish hit the poppers with a massive explosion! Next fish on popper and the grip handle on the Saltist pops off. Screw loosened. Everytime I loaded up the grip would pop off. Any way after a struggle we managed to land and release the fish. We scored 3 or 4 on poppers landed/released, dropped a couple more from tackle failure and caught about another 8 or 9 on pillie. Kept four and released the others. Biggest went 45kg smallest 28kg. Probably the best fishing I have ever had.

Anything is possible but you would need a heavily spooled overhead to hold at least 500m of 10kg and you will need to go 10 times that far out wide for these YFT. Not to say YFT of that size have not been caught closer but not recently. 15-24kg is usually the norm but I took a gamble on the 10kg and certainly didn't expect that big girl to comeu p....

Fished on Saturday on FinBin with Graz and Al and left Phar Cue at home, trolled out to the 1000fm line for zero's then headed back towards Browns. Started the cube about 3.00 and Graz hooks a 6 kg alby within 20 minutes. Al got a super run then busted off, then a couple of minutes later I get a run on the 10kg Tyrnos. Hook up and get a super run, fought a sluggish fight for 40 minutes and up comes an absolute barrel of a YFT..... with Als hook and trace coming out of her mouth. I called it for 50kg. Bled and gutted and pulled a 2kg tuna from its belly. With all the blood on the deck we washed it down and with the blood flowing in after 20 minutes we had to two massive Blue sharks circling the boat, we estimated one 8 ft the other 10 foot. Al hooked one on the 15kg outfit to have it tail wrap, thrash and bust off. It was 6.30 and we were ready to go home. Got back to the SGFC to weigh the fish (thanks Ivan) and got 48.6 kg bled and gutted. Great day and plenty of sushi to go around. Tommo

'Maybe if you find the culprit , you could take em out for days fishing, and enjoy it as the bug bites, they buy their own boat, and then have to find a place to park it." Take them out fishing!?!?!?!?

Thanks to all for keeping an eye out. It appears a disgruntled resident took some offence to having 'Phar Cue' parked opposite their house. They went to the local constabulary and complained. The offices said as its a registered trailer and boat they could do nothing so"Phar Cue". Any way it seems Swordy or someone contacted cops to advise it was there and I got a stunned knock at the door at 1.00 this morning to say they had been contacted and that it was in one piece at Rose Bay boat ramp. Went down to see it, all good. They must have paid a couple hundred dollars to a towy to flatbed it down there as the locks were still on. As there is no circumstantial evidence not much the cops can do. Just wont be parking it in the same spot. So again thanks to all you Raiders who spotted it. I owe you one. Cheers Tommo

Had a coupling lock, but they could have put it on a towy.

My Marham Whaler 4.5 'Phar Cue' was stolen from Rose Bay/Dover Heights in the last 24 hours. It is red and white with twin Mercury 40 2 strokes and on a single axle gal trailer. If any sees it or has news please drop me a note. Picture below. Thanks Tom

The larger fish are likely the kings with baitfish the thick dark areas. Generally on a sounder a thick dark patch is tightly packed bait. Looks like the kings were surrounding the bait ball. NICE

Stucatz I run a 383c and love it. Screen is a bit small but otherwise good. It works for me on everything from chasing Beak to chasing bream. If your getting noise from your sounder it might be that your transducer is sitting too high or too close to your prop. In the event of either of these the prop wash and bubbles will disturb the sounder and create a mess on your screen or will not pick up at all. Have another look at the set up requirements to see if your out here. You may even have to mount it in the hull asuming its transome mounted. As far as settings go I initially set up the sounder to read a certain level. If I am trolling for kings along headlands I set it up to read from top to about 5m or so below the bottom. If I am chasing game fish off shore I will generally have i read top to about 50m down only. This way your sounder limits it's readings to the area you want and does not waste power trying all depths. As for sensetivity I adjust this depending on the conditions and how clean the water is. More crap in the water and I have it on a lighter setting, cleaner water a higher setting. You need to play around with it until you stop picking up every particle and just pick up solid stuff. If you have the manual read it then read it again. I have owned my 383 for over 2 years and I still refer to the manual. Its a small unit but got all the bells and whistles. Sorry no sonunding kings photo's. Cheers Phar Cue

Tides were not important at all Sunday, fish were on before high tide all the way to low tide in the evening. Water temp changes seem to be the way. Though generally I would say tides are very important.

Seemed to be plenty of boats out on Sunday. With almost perfect cons we powered out started cubing and scored a 30 odd kg fin and 9 kg Alba and dropped another stonker. Wonder if there will be many left the way the fishing has been.....??

GRAZ: "i hear what your saying about your scales and understand how you got to your conclusion but i have serious doubts that fish is 18 kg's, i think it's much closer to 8, maybe 10 kg." I hear what your saying Graz but even 8kgs is being optomistic. Maybe 3 kgs....

15kg or 1.5kg..?????? sorry, just having a poke.

Just back from 2 weeks overseas. Spent a week in Phuket and we chartered Dorado a fantastic 70ft game boat for a 4 day live-aboard tour. The fishing was very quiet for the amount of time fishing. We spent all our time fishing from the Similan Islands about 70kms NW of Phuket. The waters here have been extensively fished so the fishing was slow. We did manage some Wahoo, a million stripys and macs, Baracuda and some dollies. We dropped a Black around 80kgs. Great boat but slow fishing. Bottom fishing was good. Did one scuba dive from the boat and saw King mackeral and a couple of Doggies around 20-30kgs. Then headed to Kuala Rompin on the east coast of Malaysia with Bluesails charters and Mike Tan who was a great guy & guide. Again the fishing was a bit slow considering the fish we saw. We regularly saw free jumping Saily's though harder to catch. We ended up with 4 Saily's all around 20kg mark either slow troll or drifting. At one stage we had 6 or 7 Saily’s finning all around the boat, threw live Yakka’s at them but no hits. It seemed they were chasing whitebait sized bait and no interest in the Yakka’s. Got a few Spanish macs and lost many more. Again some bottom fishing for mixed species. Saily’s were caught on Yakka’s , baby slime and some pink reef fish. Good fun all in all and would love to get back to Malaysia when the fishing is a bit hotter later in the year. Tommo

Seven gilled sharks??

Trolled JB wide Sat/Sun on Gee Whiz. Saturday saw 3 Alby's to 6kg's otherwise quiet. A mate in another boat landed a dollie, an Alba and dropped a beakie. Heard most boats were struggling. Sunday saw glass-like conditions, we trolled about 10km's wide of the Kink. 2 rods both started screaming at the same time. As I went to grab one rod the other made a horrible crack and the line popped on some chaffing deep in the spool. Bugger!! Ripped in to the other rod and boated a nice fin about 30kg's. Only one other fish,Alby about 6-7kg's. Great cons until the NEer came up. A lot of water between fish.......

Fished out of Jervis on Sunday and trolled up one yellowfin tuna of 18kg and about 15 Striped Tuna. Water was a cool 16.5c and fish were caught only about 5 k's off shore. Great cons until the SWer came up. Another mate got 3 Yellowfin to 25kg and dropped a horse of about 40-50kgs at the boat. So they are still out there.

we try not to....

Fished up at Kingscliff (Tweed Heads) over the last few days with a mate. Finally found the bait ground he has been looking for and filled the bait tank full of Slime. Drifted live bait around and locked up solidly! 20 minutes later a fat Cobe came up, just about to slot the gaff in her and off she goes. 20 minutes later the Cobe comes up again. I ask my mate to gaff it under the jaw and as he grabs the trace the main line leaves the swivel with a 'PING'!! He has the trace in one hand while trying to lip gaff the fish. Just as the gaff comes up through the jaw the hook snaps!! He has the gaff in and we both drag it over the transom. My mate does not have the best of tackle, so we landed her on a cheap ***** reel and rod with 10kg line on it. The poor reel's drag made some screaming noises throughout the fight but handled. I thought the thing was going to explode a few times! Anyway 40 minutes of struggle and anxiousness and we had our beast. Rest of the fishing was quiet with a million goatfish caught and a dropped Tuna of some sort. Tackle failure on the cheap grrrrrrrr rig. Next time he is upgrading with something better. Tommo

Welcome to the 10KG Kingy club!

What's the legal limit for kings over a meter???