Saturday 16th March South head North Sydney FAD, long reef and harbour

[Simda]

After last week disaster of missing South Sydney FAD, decide to try the north Sydney FAD

First stop live bait, got one large Squid and some big yellow tails.

Invited one of the guys from work how was over a hour late, so did not want to get too far from he wharf but in hind site i should have tried to get some smaller yellow tails or more squid

If it was someone else i would have left without him but it was a really big deal for him to get on the water and i did not want him to miss out

Anyway he finally turned up and we headed outside the heads of Vacluse, there were about 5 boats mostly jigging so we also gave it a go

I could see that people were hooking up to what looked like small rats with the odd better fish but we had no luck.

We then decided to stick with the original plan go to the north sydney FAD, as my son's and i are keen to get our first Dolly before the season finishes.

The drive out was surprisingly smooth even through the sell was fair size. Good news, the FAD was on location, Bad news nothing on he sounder

Trawled a mixture of deep and shallow lures but still no luck. Decided to try the squid and yellowtail

Got the baits in water and put in pilchard burly and then could feel something on the line which was a big school of leather jackets, great no dollies or kings but thousands of bait stealers

Our baits were just getting striped so we head to long reef deep

Caught two 28 cm snappers which went back to grow a bit bigger, there were swarms of what

I am told is newcastle bream, does anyone know if theses are good to eat?

Headed back to the harbour where after traveling outside for about 50km we caught the only good fish of he day a nice 48cm flathead near Watsons bay

My wife would have loved to keep it but I gave it and he newcastle bream to my friend since we have more opportunities to get fresh fish although with how many fish we have caught recently that it a open topic for discussion

My kids asked me keep the yellowtails, yes this is what happens when you do not catch actual fish and they cooked them on the barbecue

[nautica]

Unlucky with the FAD mate, I had the same thing last week at the botany wide FAD is lifeless as well.

I think you would be talking about sweep,

I have no clue what happened to all the dollies.

[BillfishMan]

Guys, they have turned up again. We got some on the Botany Bay Wide fad a few days ago, but they are really small. We got them casting pillies with a small sinker on the end of circle hooks. They were everywhere.

They were about a 1 pound to a pound and half. Good fun though

We hooked a few trolling as well, but becasue they were so small they kept coming of the hooks.