Kings and Amberjack from Broken Bay

Scienceman · January 31, 2011

My 8yo boy is starting to get really keen on fishing and wanted to have a crack at some jews before he went back to school. Due to the hot / windy weather previous plans kept getting cancelled until Saturday. Forecast was for overcast and cooler conditions in the morning - perfect. High tide at 5:30am which means that the change in tide in the Hawksburry will be an hour or two after that (I find the actual change in water movement can vary a lot depending on conditions).

Up at 4:45am, boat in the water at 6am, yakkas in the tank at 7am and up the Hawksbury to try some well known jew spots. One livie and one butterfly out the back. Unfortunately I had missed the tide change by ~1 hour (bugger ) 30 min later the livie goes off. Thought it was a good jew for a bout 1 min but when it started to speed around the boat with several sizzling runs I knew it was something else - which it was, a 70cm kingfish

Another livie out and 5 min later he gets really twitchy and bang, I'm on again - this time a 68cm king. By now my boy is getting the shits as nothing has touched his butterflied yakka so I swap to a livie but nothing happens. Then my rod goes off again but this time it is a 60cm amberjack, my best to date Only 2 livies left so I tell Heath that the next fish on any rod is his. Needless to say the yakka on my rod gets twitchy again so I tell Heath to pick up the rod and hold on. It gave him a few anxious moments but he was up to the task and a nice 1.5kg amberjack joins his mates in the esky.

No one around us was catching anything but my guess is that they didnt have livies which sometimes are needed to get the kings in a feeding mood. They just cannot resist a livie in distress.

Coming back to Brisbane water was a bit bumpy with the outgoing tide, a 1m swell and quite strong NE blowing. Scared my youngster a bit but the excitement of his biggest capture to date helped him cope with the stress.