Just A Kiama Stripe

[reelmagic]

Hi all,

A beautiful forecast with flat seas ..............

We decided to fish Kiama hoping to find a blue or two that seem to down the South Coast at present. After looking at the day, probably a bad call as we struggled to find anything that look to hold fish. The water (as expected) warmed to 24.6 at 150 fathoms and the stripies that were notably missing at JB last week, were a surprising find. We got about 8 during the day and dropped probably 10 or more. The bait was very thin past 60 fathoms, but found some patches at 60-100m at the canyons. To this end, we lived baited two stripies for an hour with no reward. The current was 2knts +, due to the warm stream flowing through. After some teasing and trolling skips, we decided to go wider for the afternoon and came across a patch of striped marlin who took turns in smashing the 'shot gun'. A few loops and re-sets of the lure we finally hooked up to a little fish (the smallest and obviously the dumbest in the group). It screamed off taking considerable metres before we cleared the deck to chase. The poor thing ended up 'foul' hooked somehow and ended up dying on us making getting it to the boat difficult. We haven't killed a fish in quite a while, but in terms of the long liner that has been down south of late, all of us could not kill as many fish in ALL our collective fishing years.

Just does not make any sense! A limit of striped marlin must be imposed if we are to continue to catch them.

Thanks to Shawn Holmes a FR, who's experience enabled me to wind a fish in this time!

Edited March 24, 2009 by reelmagic

[mikeh191]

Always enjoy your posts reelmagic, you guys really no your stuff. Bad luck on the fish dying.

[tuna1]

Nice stripie Have to agree with the limit it,s crazy how the longliners are alowed to get away with what they are doing.

[sanger]

Great looking fish guys. Its a shame you werent able to release it as you would have liked!

[Steve07]

Nice fish boys,well done.I agree with you about the longliner's cleaning up the area of these precious gamefish to make a quick buck.Hopefully the govt might get its act together before there is none

left to catch.Love to see both my young girls catch just one of these beautiful striped marlin

one day.

cheers

Steve

[lukeric]

Hi reelmagic,

did you fish friday or saturday? I fished out of kiama on friday, we didnt have any bait past 55 fathoms. Trolled south then fished the bottom for a couple of blueye to 8kg, then troll a little wide of kiama canyons for zero.

How wide did you find the fish?

[reelmagic]

Hi reelmagic,

did you fish friday or saturday? I fished out of kiama on friday, we didnt have any bait past 55 fathoms. Trolled south then fished the bottom for a couple of blueye to 8kg, then troll a little wide of kiama canyons for zero.

How wide did you find the fish?

We fished Saturday! Bait was scattered within 65 fathoms. Found reasonable patches north of the canyons at 65-100m down but nothing to really get excited about. Ended up on the stripes late in the arvo. at 175 or so fathoms.