The Bay Today

[Etho]

G'day All,

Hit Botany Bay this morning at about 5:30am. Arrived at the ramp to find to our surprise that there was a few people there considering it was early in the morning. We got the boat in and motored out into the darkness of the bay, but stopped just before runway 3 as the new Gps/ Depth Sounder wasn't working properly.

30 mins later, at this stage i said "Stuff it" and we took off down towards Sans Souci. We sat just off the beach, Not much action was happening untill out of the blue dads 6lb light rods drag starts ZZzzzinging away. It didn't take him long to land our first fish, it was an awesome size whitting which came in at 33cm and pretty fat too.

After that there was not much action, a few undersized snapper and whitting. So we decided to move into the middle of the bay and drift along. This was probably the best decision we made all day as practically instantly i was onto another sweet whitting, we got him in the boat, he wasn't as fat as dads but he came in at 34cm.

Anyway we kept on drifting when all of a sudden at about 7:30am dads 6lb screams away again, ZZZZzzzzzzzzzing!!, Dad was ecstatic he thought he'd hooked a massive Flatty, But minutes later. much to our surprise we finally saw colour as we played the guessing game to see what it was. Dad calls FLATTY?, I call SNAPPER?, we got him to the side of the boat and WOW it was about a metre long Hammerhead shark. Dad was stunned, he wanted it in the boat, I wanted it anywhere BUT in the boat, then SNAP!, S#%& the 6lb line finally let go.But before it did i managed to get a few quick shots of him. Dad was disappointed that it broke off at first but then realised the there was no way he could have eaten it all anyway.

We kept on drifting in the middle of the bay until about 12:30 we managed to pick up another whitting, this time only just legal, and a legal flathead.As it started to get late and we were running low and bait and beverages. In the last few casts my plastics rod gets smashed and about 4 mins later I discover that it was a trevally which fought amazingly for its size, I thought he deserved to go back but my mate and dad disagreed. They wanted him on a dinner plane and on a majority rules 2-1 we chucked him in the ice box and headed home.

I caught all my Fish (1 Whitting ,1 trevally and many throw back Snapper) on 3" Berkley Gulp Chart/Shad Minnows and 4" watermelon Turtleback Worms.

Dad caught all his fish on prawns and squid and his Hammerhead on Pilchard.

All n' all a Great Day on the water

Cheers Etho

[clifford]

Great report Etho your dad did well getting that shark to the boat on 6lb line .

Looks like you guys had a great day, it is a sham most were under size good stuff.

cheers Clifford