Saturday 27/05/2017 Broken Bay and Offshore

[zmk1962]

Hey Raiders,

As I mentioned in another post my wife (Maria) and I headed out looking for flatties on Saturday with good friends Glen and Sue on board.  Launched at Bayview (nice ramp) around 7am and headed out through Pittwater. 

We had squid, plastics and a frozen skipjack from a previous expedition as bait. The skipjack was dropped into the burley pot to thaw out along the way.

Tried a drift between Lion and Barrenjoey, but there was a biting cold NNE breeze so we moved over to Patonga and drifted around there for a while landing a keeper flathead,  some chopper tailor and a yakka (kept as live bait).

The breeze died down around 10am so we went out past Barrenjoey to the 30-35m grounds to find heaps of juvenile flathead hitting our baits and being a general nuisance  - but after an hour or so we had landed another 2 keeper flatties and 2 octopus.  So all was good, the seas were calm and we were all enjoying the beautiful warm still conditions.

As Maria was bringing up yet another juvenile flathead she noticed a large fish circling the boat - turns out a nosy mako had joined us  and he was very interested in the tuna frame in the burly pot.

I didn't have any wire set up but managed to lay my hands on a rigged 200lb mono leader and clipped it to a 15kg outfit - and out went the live yakka. The Mako had a few looks at it, gave a couple of half hearted chases but generally appeared disinterested as if he could not be bothered to chase the yakka !  Glen came up with the idea to butterfly the yakka tail and so out it went again.  BANG ! That little bit of blood and the Mako was on within seconds. Fortunately the hook had set in the corner of its jaw and our confidence grew that the mono was going to do the job.

No aerials from him but he dove deep and after a bit of a fight we had him gaffed and tailed alongside.

With a good feed in the bag, we headed back in to drift around Patonga and Flint and Steel where Sue landed a 55cm flattie to top the day off.

What a great day - 4 flathead, 2 octopus and a 1.2m Mako!  We went out for flatties but it just shows - always be prepared as you never know when THAT fish is going to show up.

Lots of boats out and about. Hope other raiders were among them.

Cheers

Zoran

 

[rickmarlin62]

probably the best feed you will get ..luv them little makos...at least at that size they are fairly easy to handle...good day out by all accounts .nice weather nice feed nice one...rick

[Regan]

nice mako,

at that size on 15lb main line they give a good fight

[ARC H]

nice never caught one but would imagine it was a good fight

[finin]

Fish cocktails for the street lol. Just be very careful with makos, have seen them come back after 4hrs on a deck.

[blaxland]

Lovely

 

[zmk1962]

6 hours ago, rickmarlin62 said:

probably the best feed you will get ..luv them little makos...at least at that size they are fairly easy to handle...good day out by all accounts .nice weather nice feed nice one...rick

Thanks Rick... just had the octopus stir-fried as entre and a few mako steaks for dinner - superb -very good eating indeed !

[zmk1962]

4 hours ago, finin said:

Fish cocktails for the street lol. Just be very careful with makos, have seen them come back after 4hrs on a deck.

Yep... I have caught one previously and Glen has had some past experience - this mako was gaffed through the head and we kept him tailed for a good hour plus during which time he would randomly start to thrash around (he left scuff marks on the boat gelcoat on that side of the boat) - anyway I put him in the esky on ice for an hour so he was well asleep  before we started to work on him.