Fads On Fire

[njsconst]

Launched the boat at Port Botany at 6am on Wednesday (28/4/10) then quickly set about filling the bait tank with some livies. After about 20mins had about a dozen bite size yakkas onboard so headed straight out to the wide FAD off Botany Bay. As a passed through the heads the water temp was 18'C and the seas looked great. Dead flat with a slight puff of westerly wind. This enabled us to sit on about 40kph and arrived at the FAD at about 7am. As we steamed Northeast towards the FAD I watched the sounder with anticapation as the water temp rose from 18'C to 23.5'c when we arrived.

Started off with a salted pilly and straight away came up tight on the biggest dollie of the day going 96cm. For the next hour we used pillies and scored another 6 keeper dollies between 65cm - 80cm. Caught plenty under 65cm that were put back in for another day. About 9am things went quiet so switched baits to live yakkas and scored another keeper. Then things went dead and couldn't even get a touch on any baits offered.

With that in mind we headed back into the the close FAD off Botany Bay and put a livie straight in the water. Straight away it was hit and scored a good 70cm dollie. Put the last livie we had in the water again and it was smashed straight away by a 75cm fish. With all our live bait gone I went back to pillies and nothing would look at them even though I could see the buggers down there following the baits back to the boat. There appeared to be some real good ones down deep but we could hook one.

Headed back into a flatty mark off Botany Bay in 50mts of water and found nothing but stinking jackets.

Returned to the ramp at about 11:30am with a esky fully of fish.

All in all a great day on the water.

Nathan

Edited April 29, 2010 by njsconst

[mikeh191]

Nice haul of dollies,hopefully its going to be a late session for them.

Cheers Mike

[Floating_Medic]

Nice haul of dollies,hopefully its going to be a late session for them.

Cheers Mike

Yeah cause i still want to try my live bait tank out!!! And get another feed of dolly, i love that fish!

[Little Hooker]

Sounds like a very hot sessions!!

Btw did you drop pass a shop livo and dropped off 2 dollies for dave?? Cause i was there and he said a mate jus came back from the fads with dollie action. Sounds alot like you

Edited April 29, 2010 by Little Hooker

[paulcha11]

Well done Nathan, plenty of Dollies everywhere and the best thing of all is the fact that the weather was great and by the sounds of it, it must have been comfortable fishing out there.

Tell me, I've never caught a Dollie, are they any good on the plate?

Cheers

Charmo

[Dangas]

Nathan,

Im pretty sure i was out there with you at the FAD closer to BB. There were only another 2 other boats there that morning (i love fishing on weekdays)

The dollies were being very picky and it seems like the big ones would only eat live bait. I have to agree with you it was beautiful conditions out there.

[nightstalker]

Nice Dollies, great size run of fish this year eh, I remember reading months ago Dave Green on the gold coast getting a lot of big ones and predicting they would travel all the way down. His theory is the gold coast around decemeber is a good indication of what will happen further south each year in terms of predominant species, size and so on.

[njsconst]

Well done Nathan, plenty of Dollies everywhere and the best thing of all is the fact that the weather was great and by the sounds of it, it must have been comfortable fishing out there.

Tell me, I've never caught a Dollie, are they any good on the plate?

Cheers

Charmo

Charmo,

Dolphin fish or mahi mahi is a top rate table fish. In fact I rate them up there with flathead. However I like to eat them fresh. I find that after you freeze dolphin fish the flesh goes all soft and mushy. The tip with any pelagic fish is to cut their throat straight away to bleed them and then store them in ice. That way the flesh is nice and white so it presents well on the plate.

Nathan

Edited April 30, 2010 by njsconst