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Botany Bay Crocs come out to play!


adkel53

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Towards the end of last year I sold my boat and purchased a "new" one. Still not sure I made the best decision - time will tell. Today I took my wife for her first outing in this boat, which is a centre console as opposed to the forward controlled runabout I previously owned. We set off from Sylvania with blue swimmers and lizards in mind. Before we had reached Taren Point bridge she declared "I don't like this boat". The bumpy ride up front was the problem - and that was when the water was very calm! I pretended not to hear and set off for the crabbing grounds, deployed the nets and headed off to one of my favourite run-out tide luring drifts. I set her up with a paternoster style rig that had a 1/8th oz jighead on the bottom and a worm hook about 40 cm above it. These were fitted with curly tailed gulps and she cast them out and bounced them around a bit as we drifted along. Soon she gave the call "I think I've got one" and shortly later I netted a low 40's lizard. Soon after another barely legal model came aboard and was released. Before I had even had a touch she declared that she was on again. This fish was obviously a much better one and after some great rod work up from the depths came a 75cm croc - a pb for my wife! She was happy to follow the boat rules and release this old girl to live on and breed again.

We fished on and found some nice eating sized lizards in the 45-55 cm class. That was until a much better one took a gulp crazy legs that I was jigging along a dropoff. This one went 72 cm - a second substantial bay lizard in the one day. Se too swam off to repopulate the bay.

We ended up landing 10 legal lizards, keeping 5 and releasing 5. A very good sized flounder joined the keepers in the esky too. In between time we picked up the crab nets twice and brought home 5 lovely male blue swimmers, releasing a berried female along the way. Chilli crab for dinner tonight and pan fried flathead fillets tomorrow night. Maybe this boat isn't so bad after all!!

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Well done I was out in the bay Tuesday. Hooked a nice flattie only to pull hooks at the boat, no consolation prizes either. though it was good just to get out for a few hrs after this weather.

I also had a centre console. Up the fronts not the best place to be. Best teach your wife to drive and take the front. That way you won't hear the complaints.

Cheers Luke

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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Nice effort.

Do you use witches hat nets or the collapsible ones?

Witches hats. But the collapsible ones would be easier to remove the crabs from! My understanding is that you can only use one of them per licence so that would restrict the area you can cover in an outing. Anyone else tried them? I assume you can have 5 witches hats and one collapsible (designed more for for mud crabs) per licence

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