Offshore Report From The Weekend From Broadbill And Billfisher

[Ross Hunter]

At last both boats fished on the weekend and the weather was great. Both Glenn and myself decided to try trolling. The fact that we have not fished much because of the windy waether it was almost an experimental tour.

I fished for kingfish in the morning on the Saturday and whilst we did catch a couple and got hammered bya 12 kg specimen, generally the area was slow. We caught some silver trevally and a bit of other stuff, mowies and general rubbish ...but it was slow.So at around 10.30 we decided to troll to the shelf We found blue 22.5 degree water loaded with striped tuna , so much so that in some areas we could not troll 200 metres without double hook ups. We dropped down to 6 kg tackle and the customer's had a ball catching these bullet like projectiles. We caught heaps , salted them and they will be saved for snapper baits later on.

Glenn Hunter trolled the wider grounds and caught boxes of stripeys and a few small yellowfin tuna.The fish are around 5 to 8kg but were tough to find I did hear some radio talk about a couple of 45 kg fish but did not see them.

We fished for snapper in 30 fathoms off Coogee using our nice fresh striped tuna baits for zero results on reds, but a few trevally, pig fish morwong and assorted rubbish. The reef fishing over the weekend was pretty scatchy for us . I really do not enjoy that sort of fishing this time of the year.Give me the Winter and early Spring anytime.One things for sure we have plenty of bait in the freezer. The water is getting hotter it is purple and our smaller cousins the mahi mahi are just starting to show up and it will not be long before we have a better show of the big boys and my favourites ......marlin