Fishing Harbour - 28Th Sep

[david88]

Hey guys, just installed a new 'Reliable' motor and a whole bunch of fishing mods to our boat so we were keen to head out every day this week.

Met at the boat just after midnight and off to Rose bay.

Picked up about 10 yakkas and a squid at the ramp before heading out. for some reason they went off the bite pretty quick even though we had a whole school in our berley trail.

The water was dead flat with no swell, full throttle across the harbour. the motor is 25 years old but started and ran like a brand new etec,we got it from a friends grandfather who had barely used it since buying it new due to falling ill.

headed out to try out quarantine bay for jews (with old unreliabe motor we never really crossed the heads)berleyed up there and had a school of some kind of bait under us (thinking how good of a start we had had so far). dropped down some livies and had a couple of runs on fillet baits but no hookups (dammit!). picked up a few more yakkas to fish for kings.

had to go pick up a mate from watsons bay which was a bit of a delay so we didnt start fishing for kings until about an hour after sunup.

Dropped some livies off north head but didnt really know where/ how deep to fish them. no kings

went to sow and pigs for a few massive port jacksons, a tarwhine, a tailor, a few leather jackets, a bunch of trevally up to 40 cm. some undersized snapper and the sweep moved in so we decided to try out south head bommy which is normally too rough to fish in our boat but was very calm today. no idea what we could catch there but wanted to try anyway. when we got there we saw how calm it was outside so decided to head to some birds a few hundred meters away.

dropped some metals where we saw the birds and hooked into a baracouda which put up a great fight. awesome looking fish.

saw something jumping near the cliffs so we decided to put on a minnow, a metal and a plastic and troll up and down the south head cliffs. as soon as we got close to the face we saw little bonito jumping everywhere, first pass and all hooked up. first bonitos for us and man they go hard on bream gear. as they were busting up all around us we stopped motoring and cast for them and a few more were caught, unfortunately i dropped all of mine at the boat but we were all having an absolute ball.

If you do not like reading tales of woe then now is the time to tune out because this is where the 'BAD' starts.

we were drifting a bit far from the cliff and out of casting range so started the motor to head a little closer, motor starts the split seccond i turn the key (something that didnt happen much with our old motor), however when i try and put it into gear the lever wont move. turns out our warmup rev lever is limp and has broken. luckily water police are cruising past and havea tinker with it to no avail, when we try again the next time the engine is in full rev.

Our best fishing day yet comes to an end and the nice blokes at water police give us a tow all the way back to rose bay. before we put the boat on the trailer my 2 mates borrow my car to drop one of them off at watsons bay to pickup his car.

I stay on the boat to scale our nice mixed bag, unfortunately dropping one in the water in the process.

Ages later they return in my car, and inform me that his battery was flat. by this time iv picked up a substantial sunburn and was incredibly tired having not slept in 26 hours.

we go to put the boat on the trailer and notice a bit of damage that we hadnt seen before, day is getting worse.

winching the boat on and TWANG!the cable snaps and fragments go flying. im standing 3 meters away to the side and a piece of rusted cable hit me in the top of the head, so lucky it didnt hit pointy end first or in my eye!

so tired, angry and no idea what to do we trie releasing cable, running anchor rope under it and using that to pull it on, TWANG - rope snaps.

we ended up solving the problem by tying a chain knot with the cable around the boat eye and that worked, however i recieved many rusty steel splinters in my hands in the process.

drive the boat home and leave my mait there to wait for someone to return with jumpers to pick him up.

The feed that night was pretty good but seemed lackluster due to our tired, sunburnt states.

So there it is, good start, good mixed bag, bad ending.

now fishraider is where i have learned all i know about fishing so lets see if anyone can help me fill in some gaps in this story;

-Where abouts in quarantine bay is good to anchor for jews (specific depth or another indicator would help)

-I have heard a lot about catching kings around north head, where should i be aiming to drift or how far out should i anchor and how deep should i set my livebaits?

-Do the bonito regularly hang in this area, any particular tides/ times better than others.

-I know the general squidding areas inside southhead but what technique do i use to fish these areas with jigs as i have had no luck so far.

-Does anyone know how i can go about fixing my control box. there are a number of parts inside it that i can adjust before i close it and i dont know if each should be slid one way or the other before i close it. is there a place i can find a diagram of how it should look befor i close it up? the motor is an evinrude 70 trim n tilt from 1985.

Thanks heaps guys. interested to know how everyone else went today.

Regards Dave Esber

[Guest rzep]

Wow what a day Dave,

You definitely had some bad luck

Hopefully you can have her up and running in no time so you can get back out there.

Can't help you with any of your questions though, Sorry mate I just don't fish those spots.

[james77]

That is an amazing story Dave. At least the fishing part was okay, despite all the other problems. I was going to add that it cant get any worse next time, but I dont want to jinx you.

I hope next time your luck improves.

[Day's Fishin]

Hi Dave, some tough luck there mate. Quarantine is fished on the right side as you enter. Bonito are all along the rocks from south head to Rosa gully at just about any time of the year, best times are dawn. Watch the wave action at the bom bora just as you get to Rosa, stay well clear. You have to troll close in at about 5knots, I find that Christmas trees work best at about 20meters behind the boat.

Regards Jeff

[framedtrash]

very lucky mate

not a very good idea to go fishing outside the heads any near cliff faces when testing out a 2nd hand motor

could of ended very badly if the swell had picked up

when i got my boat i didn't venture outside for a few weeks until i have full confidence in both boat and motor

good to hear you got back ok and got a feed