Saturday & Sunday Kingfish

[fishmaniac]

Last week I purchased a new rod to match up with my saltist 40. I have been looking around for almost a year now for something suitable. I had looked at the monster mesh, the t-curve's etc but they were not quite what i wanted given the money i was going to spend. After much deliberating I decided on the 60B saltiga overhead.

My first trip with the finally completed outfit was down the coast. Unfortunately the water was only 19degrees and had put the kingies into hibernation. I towed live squid around for two days only to catch two rats... I fished outside of sydney on monday for a few tentative strikes. The fact that no-one else I had spoken to that day was having any luck made me think that the kings were not in the mood.

After a week of perfect weather during which study was my first priority, I decided to head out on saturday to try and land a decent fish! It started off very slow indeed. I trolled live squid around North Head and Bluefish for not even an enquiry. I then headed down south to try and find some fish. I found a bommie a few kms south and hooked up on my first pass. It was a good fish and the rod handled beautifully. It soaked up the shock and had unbelievable strength in the butt given its thickness.

First legal fish on the new rod at roughly 70cm. There were plenty of followers and if I had another person on board I could gaurantee another hookup. So with the fish landed it was off for another troll run. I then managed continuel hookups on yakkas, squid and jig for the next hour and a half. 5 were legal between 68cm and 75cm and the rest were rats. One hookup was awesome. I was trolling and keeping a close eye on the depth sounder. The screen filled up with arches and within seconds i was hit. This fish was the biggest of the day going 75cm.

Today i went out fishing with dad to try and get some dolphin fish and kingies. I was keeping in touch with a mate who was already out and said the dolphin fish were very spooky. This made sense given the hiding they would have copped over the last week with ideal weather. We decided to give them a miss and tried north head for snapper on soft plastics. No takers (well not snapper anyways) and many bonity were being trolled up around us, so off to get some kings. We trolled the spot i had caught fish yesterday but the place was barren. We then trolled along and found another bommie where we landed two fish (one was legal and released). Unfortunately we got the bomb snagged with a dramatic rise from 63ft to 32ft in a matter of about 10m which cut our session short. I was very dissapointed given the fact that I don't get out with my old man much due to his work, but at least he got a go on the new rod and pulled a legal fish.

Unfortunately I did not take pictures over the last couple of days as there were no monsters.

Here is a pic of a dolphin fish I landed a few weeks ago at 106cm,

[mikeh191]

Nice dollie Fishmaniac, shame about the kings and lossing your bomb.

Cheers Mike

[paul.kenny]

Great report fishmaniac and congrats on testing your new rod on some decent kingies....sounds like you had a couple of lively sessions

[Penguin]

Sounds like you had some fun on the Kings at least, and thats a

fine Dollie you have there Andrew

cheers

[fishmaniac]

I am making a new bomb today and will probably be heading out again on tuesday or wednesday. There are plenty of larger dollies around at the moment and livies seem to be doing the trick.

[gobbledock]

Nice catch. Makes me feel better that we are not the only ones struggling of late lol.

Havnt caught a legal king since the maritime fined us. Bummber about the bomb, they aint cheap. Good luck, hopefully they`ll come back on

[alexit]

Hey Mate

Good to see someone getting out and into them.... I have had too many social dos getting in the way of the fishing.

I picked up a catalina jig stick a few weeks back. Looked at the spin saltiga 60 at the time ...... really nice but I just could not justify the coin. We are back down JB for the anzac weekend, so I hope the kings will still be on.

alex