Harbour Kings

[inhlanzi]

G'day Raiders

Went to the harbour earlier in the week with Go Fish Pete and birthday boy Roffo.

Got a good supply of yakka and headed for the usual spots XYZ - nothing!

and and then spots PQR - nothing!

and even DEF and ZIP!!!!

we really tried hard and had great downrigged yakka all morning. Only hit was from 40 cm Tailor. We treid a drift or two and I managed a large leatherjacket on live yakka !

It was looking bleak and we headed home.

Got to spot S and I looked at all the tasty jellybeans in the livie wells and said one last go boys. Hardly a few meters and smashy smashy and the texie had a good buckle and the 6500 starts to zzzzzzz. Nice clean clear deep water and up comes a beauty at 70cm to the fork!

Now Go Fish Pete and I love Roffo cause he doesn't eat fish and he doesn't like coffee!!! So Kingey for dinner for us! We downrigged some more and picked up a smaller one at 64. The best fight from a small king in ages. He won his freedom and went back to fight another day.

Back at the ramp by 2 and another hard but good day on the Harbour.

Hope you enjoyed the Birthday Roffo!

Headed out with vagabond and fisheypete today and tried a whole new approach.

Went to spot w and looked for some yakka. Not much to be found so off to spot v .

Vagabond and Fishypete quickley got a few in the livie well. Here it is - I just can't resist a free swimming speculator when fishing for livies so out went a nice jellybean. The boys got a few more in the well and then zap bang zzzzzzzzzzzz the free swimmer got smashed and up comes a nice 64.999999! kingey.

Gees fisheries knows just what size to make the limit this year. Anyway a quick photo op and back to maul some other livie another day.

Later we headed to a favourite haunt and anchored up. We had a great array of bait and rigs but sadly no Kings. Vagabond had a really good hit but it somehow it managed to get off.

Called it quits at 4.30 and headed home.

No kingie for dinner but a good, different and busy day on the amazing Harbour.

Cheers

inhlanzi

[Roffo]

Thanks Again Gents for a great day, the way I see it a birthday not spent in the office is a great day.

Nice day on the Harbour, couple great fishing buds, couple of good fish & a cumfy boat PRICELESS...

Another first for me downrigging for kings, what a buzz.

Hope to do that again soon.

Cheers

Roffo

[Guest GoFish Pete]

Just a few pics from the last two times Mike and I and more recently Roffo have chased the kings and come home with a feed.

The 78cm model

And the Kingy and Sambos caught on the 4-3-08

We have worked hard though for these results , might have another shot at them on Wednesday or next Sunday.

Cheers

GoFish Pete

[arpie]

Well done guys!! Good result ..... for part of it anyway!

Roberta

[Roffo]

Hi Gang,

I ended up back out there on Sunday arvo for a few hours and nailed another 4 kings upto 68cm just suspending yakkas while we were anchored in middle harbour.

I think I've got the bug again after a couple of years away from the kings (watch out Pete)

I think the bait runners are the way to go on these little rat bags BTW (thanks Mike)

Anyway back out there on the weekend and next thursday so we'll see what happens.

Cheers

Roffo.

[heavy]

looks like a fantastic day out,,,

congrats....

mighty good looking kingie..

[jewgaffer]

Hi Mike Looks like you're having a good time getting among the kingfish on the Harbour.

It seems the Hawkesbury is not picking up as it should for this time of the year. The activity up there at the moment seems to be mainly an over abundance of baitfish with flathead and bream in the shallows and not much going on with the jewfish or the usual bi catch in the deeper water.

Your quite right, it seems they had worked out the average size of the schools very conversatively even before we were hit by the new minimum lengths.

It had occurred to me that the larger fish we are allowed to take from the schools may well be breeding females and I wonder whether or not the experts have taken that possibility into account.

Otherwize taking larger fish out of a school when they may, more often than not, mainly consist of the females of the species, is a sure way of eventually reducing the overall numbers, which would defeat the purpose.

Mike I wonder if your friend doing the study on jewfish at Sydney University has an opinion on the number of female fish taken and kept and the possibilty of larger fish over the size limit being a larger number of females than males of other species as well.

I wonder if and how they determine that factor when they set the size limits.

Cheers

jewgaffer