Botany Bay - Trevally | Fat Flattie | Bonito

[Baysic]

G'day Raiders,

Had a cracking morning out on the water at Botany last Saturday.

We woke early and hit the ramp at foreshore drive just on first light... The plan scout out some surface action then try for squid at watts reef before hitting the west of the oil wharf.... And maybe hit up the drums...

So we looked around the runway first cast of the bumper bar hit a tailor way too small... With my mate pulling in a juvenile tailor too we decided to head for watts.

Disaster strikes and the outboard an old 79 70 Hp will only do 7 knots rather than the usual 28..we stop have a flick at one of the Nav markers and start her up again after a pump of the fuel bulb and crisis averted as the bow rises and usual service is resumed from the evinrude

Parking a little runabout over the reef is easier said than done, and what ever I did seemed to take us away from the reef, spotted Scotty Lyons out there in his green boat and and all our manoeuvring seemed to be getting in his way and doing us no good so we ended up a little east of the oil wharf

I burleyed up with Pilchard cubes and with 4 rods in the water between us things started to get exciting...

We got hit up with some trevally landing 5 keepers between the two of us, then pulling in my bait I got hit like a freight train and spent the next 10 minutes wrestling with a fish before finally netting a bonito which is a first for me.

Really lucky To net it as I had foul hooked it in the side.... Still a keeper and an excellent fight.

We moved to the west of the oil wharf and anchored a lot closer to it than 100m right in line with 2 other boats... On seeing the road bend, I've gone to reel it in and had another ridiculous fight on my kingfish rod and reel, which seemed about to give out on me, it felt like ages until we saw colour and then realise it's a ray..... It certainly took some line off me had it up from 40 foot and back a couple,of times... It broke off at the last which saved us the effort of cutting the line.... But it was a beast for sure.....

To top it all off next fish is a Pb Flattie 60 plus cm which was a good little battle to end the day

So there you go raiders not a bad day out

[big Neil]

Nice little mixed bag there mate.

[night_rider]

Awesome feed there mate, well done indeed. Great to see the bay still producing!