Port Stephens Report - 1st March 4-3-2

[REEF MAGIC CHARTERS]

Hi all,

We we headed out for our 4th day in a row but today we had Marty & his dad Doc on board out of Port Stephens. The weather report was great with a southerly expected through late that night. We left the dock at 6.45am and headed south east to where we had been getting a few fish over the previous days. When we arrived it was great to see only two other boats in the area unlike the previous 3 days where we had up to 60+ boats around us.

The sounder came alive with some nice bait in 40 fathoms so we jigged up some jumbo slimies and Damien sent one straight back down. Within 3 minutes the livey was grabbed and the fish slowly swam away with calls from myself of a little black... i soon to change my mind....We only had the one rod out so we were able to quickly chase the fish and had him not far from the back of the boat (hadn't seen him) when all hell broke loose. The fish headed for the south west and we were off after him.. with waves coming over the back and the cockpit full of water the fish was still pulling off line faster than we could chase him, Damien called that we had 200m of line left and we spun the boat to chase him.. we got another 200m of line back on the spool until he decided it was enough and emptyed the spool. Having not jumped i would say a very large black marlin.

We then looked around and the bait had dispersed so Damien rigged some skip baits and we worked the area.. before long the long rigger snapped clear and we had a solid 80k striped on. Marty did a great job and Damien soon had him on the leader and put a tag in. Back out went the baits and we hand another bite but no hookup. About and hour later Damien called a fish on the short rigger and teased him and he engulfed the skippy. This fish was very arobatic and jumped all over the place while we chased him in reverse. With Marty again on the rod and Doc taking photos we got him up on the leader and he decided to head up the port side jumping.. Damien dumped the leader and managed a mid air tag shot as the fish put on a great display. He got him back on the leader for Doc to take a few more shots before releasing the fish. We will post some photos when we get them from Doc as he got some great shots.

We headed for the sheds at 4pm and could see a storm building from the south west, little did we know that it would hit us in 20 minutes with no warning from the coast guard. Myself and Damien were on the flybridge and had thunder, lightning, torrential rain and 60+ knot wind hit us for around 20 minutes. There were half a dozen small trailer boats out there and ourselves and "Onsite" (another game boat) tried to get them on the radio but had no response. It was a nervous wait to see the small white caps of the trailer boats as they came over the horizon but it was good to see them as we were very worried.

The storm also hit the port with reports of trees being knocked down at Little Beach car park on top of parked cars.

Anyway it was another great day out and the fishing is still great. For any available dates please give Damien a call on 0407113349.

Cheers

Mike