Kingies In Middle Harbour

[King slayer]

Hey raiders,

Excuse the late post but I guess i just work too hard when I'm not fishing.

So we started the morning at a gentlemanly hour for once (5.30am in the water), and went off to get a squid or two. Turns out we only could get one decent calamari off Balmoral and no yakkas for us for the third trip in a row for me!

Anyhow so my theory was that with the super clear water the bait fish and therefor predators might have made their way up river a bit. So we zoomed right up MH with the idea to try for a yakka or slimey up in Killarney. No goods, but a guy we met at the jetty said he got a stack of big slimeys there the night before.

So it was off to a new location we had been told to check out in the area. I'll say this much to all but those closest: What the Gaffer says about the green markers is GOOD advice. I would have never tried this spot.

So we are off the point about 50 meters in about 12m deep water and action on the sounder at about one hour before the high. Put out the squid head with 8/0 hook and some other selections out on other rods. TheSquid head got smashed after a minute or two but no hook up and my heart is pumping now. My mate Brett is telling me to calm down, but I get so hyped, especially after a drought. The bait was un damaged so back it went with the hope of a jewie. Smashed again after ten minutes or so and after a good battle (Pulling around 7kg of drag no worries) i pulled up a fat 74cm Kingie OOOhh now I'm excited. With blood all over me and a huge smile I quickly pull the squid tube out, remove the wings and skin, over they go (everyone knows they aren't much good for bait right?) and cut up some strips.

First strip down on the 8/0 and soon after....smashed and no hook up. Re baited and again after a while and once again no hook up....FFFF....shhhh...AAAhh, you know! I finally caught on that I needed a smaller hook for the kings and after switching to a 5/0 Gamakatsu my second last strip goes down and maybe ten minutes after....OOhh yeah its on again. This bugger wrapped it self around ALL our lines on the way up, but that was hardly an issue as I pulled him out. Funny thing was and this is new to me, I had him foul hooked through the eye! He was 72cms and not as fat.

Amongst all this we are also playing around with the bream gear and Brett got absolutely done over on 3kg line by one of these beasts. It took a tiny piece of squid on a size 1 and reefed him after a minute or so. I reckon he did well to last that long. He did manage to pull up a nice Blue swimmer though!

By this time the squid was all gone and pillies were not producing the goods. We pretty much headed home via some other spots, but with out good bait it was just beer and fresh air...Not too bad really.

The final surprise for the day was the gut contents of the second King. He had in his gut: The wings of the squid which I threw out and my two missing strips in his gut that i lost before changing the hook size!

See the pic below.

Cheers all.

Dave

[shefford]

Sounds like you had an ok day before work

Nice report was a good read.

Gl on your next trip

[Ray R]

G,day Kingslayer, that is a good read and congrats on the kings, the little squid scraps worked.. I am unable to see the pics though.. Cheers....

[gretsch]

Nice work Kingslayer.. you are living up to your name.

It amazing what the fish will scoff.. I guess fresh squid is fresh squid irrespective of the anatomical part!

Gotta love late season Kings!!

[slinkymalinky]

Nice work... never ceases to amaze me when and where kings seem to turn up... and no need to put them on ice as they come to the boat pre-chilled

Cheers, Slinky

[Braidbuster]

When I went out with a certain popular charter kingfish specialist he said that after the head & guts the second best bait for kings is fresh calamari wings!

[jewgaffer]

Good effort Dave That's alright , fishing for jew and getting a couple of nice size kings and a couple of big runs and unfortunately no hook up. I like the change of depth and fishing towards the outside of the usual locations. Might pay to go back to the jetty and load up with slimies the guy said have been up there plus any other livies you can pick up. Dave I don't want to sound dictatorial, but you're in good territory up there and I don't want to see you restricting your chances by breaking the golden rule by going early as it sounds like a few good baits had signs of bite activity only to came back intact. Tighten up those drags and let the rods do the work. Monitor the bites by all means but leave the bites alone until your rods bend hard and stay down or I'll come up and chop your arm off. It's not worth while mucking around with feeble or even mid size bites. Look at it this way, using that gear up there you mean business. You can easily target those other species at another time or they'll more than likely attract jew or get hooked up under the 8/0 hook shank anyway. I know it can cost a lot of time to feed them but with jew, having good solid baits out and time spent eventually pays for itself.

A big fish will always come back just like a dog will leave a dog biscuit, and wait for another one and then always come back for the first one. If you bring in a big solid bait, it's not there anymore and the fish you hope to catch goes without, like fishermen do when they touch a rod at every twitch and wind in.

So many fishermen tend to go too early where self control really counts when fishing with bait and not touching a rod, even a rod showing a series of bites, a rod with a good fish on it has an easily recognisable hook up bend.

Cheers

jewgaffer

[adkel53]

I had a session earlier in the year where I could only rassle up one fairly small squid. After the pickers had demolished the strips all I had were the wings, guts and a tenticle by the time I found some kings at a different location in MH. I fished them unweighted on a 3/0 hook and landed one 70cm king after being bricked three times by others. The peeled prawns and pillie pieces I also tried that day remained untouched even though I am sure the kings were still around (the last one had a mate with him at the boat). The moral to the story - don't waste any peice of a hard won fresh cephalopod!!

[King slayer]

Ok guys here are those pics. Don't know what happened.

Hey Byron, good advice there mate. I'm generally pretty good with leaving the rods alone till they're hooked up though. We also left two other rods out with big butterflied mullet and whole pillie, but no takers there.

We've been hopeless with livies of late. I think it has a bit to do with the activity on the day we go out and they're all hanging out somewhere that we aren't. We usually manage a bigger Cowan young or tailor, but those buggers are so hard to keep in place and always tangle the other lines. Still, we keep on trying. Hey..what else are we gonna do??

No more wasted calamari bits for me.

[jewgaffer]

Ok guys here are those pics. Don't know what happened........

......... Hey Byron.......I'm generally pretty good with leaving the rods alone till they're hooked up though.

.........We usually manage a bigger Cowan young or tailor, but those buggers are so hard to keep in place and always tangle the other lines.

Hi Dave No need to swim livies like soft plastics. Slow them down mate, let them tow the gear along, trim the tail fin/s and make them struggle and show distress signals. A predator like a jew will gob them down if just to clean the place up.

It's dog eat dog down there at feed time and a struggling livie rings a bell for every predator within co-ee as scarce as they may be at times which is typical of fishing anywhere all the same.

If you chop half the top fin off a livie it can't swim upwards and surface on you and vice versa, by cutting the bottom fin they can't swim downwards and bury themselves in cover on you. Just remember top fin means can't swim or struggle to the top and bottom fin means can't swim down properly and also when floated (using a float at depth I mean) or lightly weighted to hold mid depth where you may have the inclination or the whim to do that.

A cast out livie is already in trouble as it is so give them a bit more and slow them down with the reel. A sick but free running livie will swim to a safer place to take any chance they can to survive, they're not stupid.

The more a crippled livie struggles and goes nowhere the more attention it'll get, that's for sure.

It's a good idea to have a 9 foot rod or even a 10 footer as I use and cast as far as you can away from and over the 7 footers with your dead baits or your other struggling livies on.

With the livies cast out much further using longer rods as mentioned, they not only become range finders, but the livies can also be wound in a few metres and dropped back down every now and then to cover more ground.

Cheers

jewgaffer

[m3rush]

If you chop half the top fin off a livie it can't swim upwards and surface on you and vice versa, by cutting the bottom fin they can't swim downwards and bury themselves in cover on you.

Nice work on the Kings boys.

Great advice Jewgaffer. Makes perfect sense. I just never thought of doing that before. One question though, are you referring to the tail fin (top + bottom)?

Cheers,

M3Rush

[jewgaffer]

Great advice Jewgaffer. Makes perfect sense. I just never thought of doing that before. One question though, are you referring to the tail fin (top + bottom)?

Cheers,

M3Rush

Hi m3rush

Trim part of the main propulsion fin, the tail fin and which one you trim depends on the rig and the state of the bottom, remembering fish have buoyancy but need propulsion to swim, and if they struggle to swim properly all the better.

I have written it as tail fin/s being both tail fins as an alternative while not elaborating on same, to have a livie, rather than swimming thru a running sinker rig, but stirring up the bottom in mind, when using the fixed drop sinker rig I like to use for that purpose.

Anything moving and stirring up the bottom is what you want on at least one rod to catch the interest of jew coming in and scanning the bottom when nothing else is around, and particularly where a flathead bi catch is an option.

Trimming both tail fins can come in handy, as at least you'll know that that livie will be on the bottom for the excercize, and I'll guarantee that if a team of divers took a close look at the deep water in upper middle harbour at times, it would look like an underwater desert apart from a ray or two coming along here and there.

When trimming either the top or the bottom tail fin, you have to decide in what part of the water you want a livie to be struggling while using its own buoyancy.

If you trim both tail fins, you'll find the livie will be wounded and struggle to move but it will remain upright on the bottom and somewhat in balance relying on its dorsal and side fins.

Cheers

jewgaffer

[m3rush]

I have written it as tail fin/s being both tail fins as an alternative while not elaborating on same, to have a livie, rather than swimming thru a running sinker rig, but stirring up the bottom in mind, when using the fixed drop sinker rig I like to use for that purpose.

Anything moving and stirring up the bottom is what you want on at least one rod to catch the interest of jew coming in and scanning the bottom when nothing else is around, and particularly where a flathead bi catch is an option.

Great advice once again Jewgaffer.

We don't get up to Middle Harbour as often as we would like, as BB and the Hacking are right on our doorstep.

However, you've given me some good ideas to try out. I reckon that fixed drop sinker rig would work nicely in the Hacking in a couple of those Jew holes around the place. BB on the other hand is another story. It will be a bit of trial and error, but that certainly ads a new dimension to trial.

Always appreciate your words of wisdom.

Cheers,

M3Rush