G'day raiders. I've been a member for quite a while but this is my first actual report.
Decided to go wet a line after work on Friday afternoon, tried to get to the bait store before it closed but missed it by 10 minutes…. Had a decent sized frozen squid I caught recently and ended up getting some servo pillies and prawns. Met my mate Chris down at Drummoyne boat ramp around 6:30pm and headed out in my 14ft tinny. Was originally heading out to Sow & Pigs but as we got close the swell was really bouncing the boat around so we decided to explore some calmer waters. We found some fish on the sounder as we were cruising near Rose Bay, even though we haven’t fished this spot before we thought we would give it a go so anchored up and dropped a few baits down.
The first 2 hours produced heaps of undersized snapper around 30cm and couple of bust offs by something with teeth. I decided to rig up the Baitrunner loaded with 20lb braid and throw the squid head out. Within a few minutes it got smashed and busted off almost instantly, something with teeth nailed it as line had a clean cut. I re-rigged, put on a decent sized squid strip and sent it back out to soak, not even 10 minutes later I heard line coming off the Baitrunner really slowly. I let it run for a little while before flicking the Baitrunner off and then BOOM! The rod buckled over zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. Something with a lot of weight and power was on the other end of the line and all I could do was hold on as line was peeling off the reel. This thing felt like I hooked up to a freight train, the first run lasted over 2 minutes!! Chris was getting the other lines out of the water but one had tangled around my line……. I’m so thankful Chris knew what he was doing as with a quick slash with a sharp knife, he got my line free and I was back in business. About 10 minutes into the fight I thought I had it in the bag but once it saw the boat it took off again zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz this run lasted about a minute but this time it ran straight under the boat. I had the rod in the water while Chris was tilting the motor up so I didn’t get cut on the prop. I wasn’t having much luck leading the fish to the back of the boat but this horse had so much strength it actually pulled the boat around. No complaints from me as once the boat had spun around, the line came out from underneath the boat and I was back into him again.
15 minutes into the fight and I had finally got close to the boat again, my heart was pumping a million miles an hour from adrenalin and anticipation of seeing whatever this was but once it saw my boat the rod buckled over again and it went for another run. This run only lasted about 30 seconds and once it was done I think he had completely spent himself as didn’t do much apart from the odd head shake on the way back in. When it finally came up I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was a horse of a JEWFISH!! Chris tried to net it but could only fit the head in so I grabbed the Boga grips, and managed to get a lip grip on. We struggled to pull it into the boat but once we did we realised just how big this fish really was……….
This horse went 135cm and I’m calling around 35-37kg (tried to weigh it but it was off the 60lb scales). This is only the 2nd Jewie I have caught and by far the biggest fish I have ever caught in my life!!!!!!!!
We kept fishing and pulled out a few decent sized bream, a couple port Jackson sharks, some sort of little reef shark and a good sized gummy shark around 6kg, all went back in as this Jewie would feed an army.
Some yakka’s had come up the burley trail so I caught one and sent it out unweighted. Fishing went a bit quiet and we made the call to leave in the next 10 minutes when I heard the Baitrunner start to take line. Again I let it run for a few second then pumped the handle and I was on! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz another Jewie!!! This one only had 1 good run in him and then I was able to knock him over fairly quickly. It was a little green when it got to the boat gave us both a bath when we were grabbing it out of the water. The small jewie went 92cm (well not small but smaller than the big boy), what a way to end the best Sydney Harbour fishing session of my life……
I was going to enter this into the catch of the month comp but didn’t read about the spool of line until after it had been filleted, ah well I think the capture was the real prize anyway.