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Friday Fishing - Sydney Harbour & Long Reef


fragmeister

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Hi Raiders,

First fishing trip since I can back from Broome.

Work suddenly got busy so I just couldn't find a day to go out.

That's a pretty poor effort really isn't it! But I did go this morning and, as is usual for me, there is another story aside from the fishing.

It was a little cold this morning but I wanted to chase some snapper and be on the water early so I rugged up and

headed out at 4am getting to Long Reef just on first light. On the way I went to grab my safety googles ( no I am not overly cautious...but if you wear a balaclava and a pair of clear googles

you don't freeze your eyeballs off when you stick you head up over the screen - which I do for better visibility at night.

Anyway,when I grabbed my goggles I noticed that my waterproof wallet with my boat license, fishing license, phone charger and spare Minn Kota remote batteries ( this will come into play later) was not there.

That didn't stop me continuing though so I headed north in the darkness. The wind and chop were not pleasant and certainly stronger than predicted and if that was a 1.0 meter swell then you could knock me over with a feather!

Anyway, when I got to long reef I went out to about the 15m depth line on the reef and looked for signs of fish on the sounder.

There was a bit of bait around and some bigger marks under the bait so I deployed the Minn Kota to see if it could hold me on the mark using spotlok

but when I tried the remote it was flat and I did not have a spare battery so I anchored up and started a burley trail.

I send down a whole pilchard on one rig and some fresh squid on the other and they were both immediately hit producing a couple of pan sized snapper. That's what I'm talkin' about I thought.

I just dropped one rig back down and again it was hit immediately buy something a lot more solid. The run was full of head shakes so i was confident that this was a better red than before.

Well, it wasn't a bigger one it was just two pan sized ones on the two hook rig,

After this the pickers came around and all I got was a bunch of reef fish more often than not foul hooked.

I moved, and repeated the exercise but as the light came up the pickers were everywhere and I only got one more which I kept for dinner tonight.

There were 4 other boats, 2 guys flyfishing but there were no clear signs of surface action so not sure what they were up to. There was a boat working the

15 meter depth line with me and there ws a commercial fisherman and a couple of other boats working the wall

with down riggers so I assume they were targeting some winter kings. I didn't see any I could Identify on the sounder and I didn't see anyone catch a fish.

On the way back I trolled from Bluefish Point to inside North Head with a bibbed lure at about 5 meters and a skirted lure but no takers.

I saw a lot of fish in small schools but not sure what they were - perhaps salmon.

Back in the harbour I found plenty of trevaly at Sow and Pigs around the 35cm mark so I kept one of those for a little sushi entree.

Typical winter fishing really.

Got back to the ramp at about 12:30 and I opened the bung and about 100 liters of water came out.

I have never had any water in the boat and I did notice the auto bilge pump didn't come on so something is clearly not right.

Looks like a job for the weekend.

Anyway, it was a much needed brake from work.

Cheers

Jim

Edited by fragmeister
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Hi Neil,

Yes, found the wallet and thanks for asking!

Just about to check the problem out. I am looking back to the last thing I did which was replace the live feed bait tank pump... I am wondering if the pump outlet it loose or damaged and spilling into the boat.

Cheers

Jim

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Well there is always some kink in the system that stops a plan working, you recovered well with some good gosh by the sounds of it.

In regards to your leak I had a brand new Johnson bait pump that was spraying water out of its housing under the floor. My bildge pump was intermittently cutting in ( every few minutes) that alerted me to the problem.

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Well there is always some kink in the system that stops a plan working, you recovered well with some good gosh by the sounds of it.

In regards to your leak I had a brand new Johnson bait pump that was spraying water out of its housing under the floor. My bildge pump was intermittently cutting in ( every few minutes) that alerted me to the problem.

Been looking at this a little closer. Going to start a new post to see if anyone has any suggestions.

Cheers

Jim

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You could try filling your boat with water, looking for leaks . This will rule out any damage to hull/welds/bung seats etc.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Yes.

Good idea.. progressing to this after an on the water test on Friday,

Thanks for your interest and suggestion.

I have created a new post about this here

Edited by fragmeister
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