Harbour Sat 10th

Josh88 · January 10, 2009

Hi all,

Left Roseville about 5am this morning, saw some bait near the spit and stopped for a few casts but to no avail, wish i had stayed there half an hour longer now as people that fished there got fish over 70cm instead we went to middle head and tried for squid. Surprise surprise none to be had, not sure what it is again but we just can't seem to get any squid, come to think of it i have no idea why we didn't stop and get those slimies we saw. Moved on and tried a few other squid spots but again nothing. Then headed over in the direction of bradleys head to see if we could see those rats that have been hanging in that area for a while. Didn't look like there was much doing but then the water exploded near the big navy drums, only tailor unfortunately.

We chased these fish for a couple of hours and landed probably 40 fish biggest about 45cm but released them all as i'm not a fan of tailor. After that we headed over to quarantine and to my amazement there were only about 3 boats there. Got a really good spot right infront of the buoy able to drift baits back to it. Only had our fish market prawns and squid tube, got the burley of mashed prawn head going and immediately there are little brown stripey things and a few kings cruising through the trail, put baits on their nose and of course they don't touch them, accidently foul hooked some of the stripey things and put it back out live but they weren't interested. The fish got a bit more active moved just off the marker and started hitting some bait on the surface next to the boat, threw an unweighted bit of prawn in the middle of them on the 6lb bream gear, left it in the holder as i grabbed the sluggo rod and it starts bending in half, a good fight for a rat, my smallest ever kingfish at 52cm, good to christen that rod with one though Decided to put out a whole prawn on the overhead in ratchet free spool, starting screaming off after a few min and hit it into gear and was into what seemed like a much more solid fish. It got itself wrapped around the anchor rope pretty seriously so we went to pull up the anchor to try and untangle it, of course the anchor is now stuck, takes us a while to drive the anchor out, pull it up untangle the line, in the meantime of course the king has found something on the bottom to get us stuck in, it was a bit odd, we could feel the fish and we tried pulling it out as hard as we could, free spooling it, everything for about 15-20min and finally it got too tight and SNAP the rod breaks in half, then of course the line soon follows

The rod was a 15kg Silstar Crystal Blue which bend very well and i was amazed to see that go before the 30lb braid. Here's the remains

Other half went in the drink.

Stayed around for another 30-40min saw other boats pick up a couple of rats as well as fisheries checking everyone there for fish/safety gear.

Moved into MH and right where we saw the bait this morning as we slowed down there was a massive explosion next to us, they were good size kings from the size of the splashes, only stayed up for about 20secs, got a few casts in but no attention.

No luck in MH.

Cheers

Josh