Kingfish hot and cold

[Benzeenees]

Fished for kings off Moruya Heads on Wed, Thurs, Fri. On Wed two of us got 6 into the boat - 5 keepers and one under-sized. The action was fast and furious for about an hour around midday. All fish were caught on jigs but a little while later they started to get interested in live yellowtail. There were also a lot of barracouta around - we picked up a few trolling. Not being Victorian we let them go. There were 2 other boats there - one pro and one that had come up 32km from Narooma. We had a chat to the pro who predicted there would be 8 boats from Narooma there the next day.

And he wasn't far off the mark. On Thursday there were 6 boats patrolling the area but the kings weren't playing - at least that was our experience. Clearly the word had gotten around as a NSW Fisheries boat made the trip from Narooma and was checking licences and eskies. Later that day we had another chat to the pro who said the kings really went off late on Wednesday. But he clearly thought little was going to happen on Thursday as he went home early.

On Friday we followed flocks of birds that were feeding on krill (or something else small). It appeared that the kings were also following the krill, or something else that was after the krill. It was very difficult fishing as the patches of kings were small and were moving quite quickly. I managed to hook something using live bait. The something turned out to be a 2m to 2.5m shark that came up from the depths very quickly and had a go at the boat! It then took off quite a distance but I was able to get it back to the boat after about a 20 min fight. We cut the line as we didn't really need 150kg of flake. I was pleased that my line, knots and a cheap overhead reel all held up quite well. I moved over to a spot where we had noted a few kings on the sounder. John kept fishing while I rerigged. And he was lucky enough to pick up a 70cm fish. Later in the day he had an entusiastic run from a king but didn't hook up.

Our tally for the 3 days was 6 kings, a couple of morwong and half a dozen flathead. We were quite happy with that but I must say that after the Wed experience we thought we would do very well on Thurs and Fri but that wasn't the case.

The water temperature varied from anout 15.5C to 17.2C - a big increase from 2 weeks earlier. We had no trouble getting yellowtail for bait. Mostly in about 25m and they were big units. And very hungry. John even caught 6 on one drop using a 6 hook jig. Heading back on Fri we saw some big schools of slimeys on the surface. Tried trolling in case there were any bigger predators around the schools but had no hits.