Port Hacking PB Flattie and surface kings

[Sea Ranger]

Well my wife and I went out today in Port Hacking

Boat fishing Stacer Sea Ranger 499

Rod Shimano Spectrum Plus 10kg 6.6ft

Reel Shimano 6500b Baitrunner  

10kg mono

50gram jighead with 6" soft plastic wiggle tail white and sparkle

Red bead about 30cm up from lure.

Anchored casting into 15 meters of water

Well the day started a bit rough with our early start being about an hour later than intended.  Gotta plan the night before better.

Got to Grays Point boat ramp at 6am no waiting.  28foot Whittley behind us.   Mrs needs to use the toilet (me too) so we let him go first and we pulled up out of the way.

By the time my wife returned from the toilet there was 6 boats waiting to go in and the bloke with the 28 footer (on his own) was having difficulty backing straight. So I helped him back his boat in and tie it off for him to get the que going.  Finally we got in.   As a side note the same bloke later passed us in the no wake zone near Wally's wharf doing around 20 knots.  Huge bow wave right through the sanctuary.  Mate if you are reading this, it is a no wake zone.  You rocked all the private jettys there and swamped 2 kayaks.  We went to our favourite secret spot (wink) and started working with our 4kg soft plastic rigs.   I had a couple of snags last week that had me cut line off my reel.  I did not realize how much I had removed and found I could not cast as my mono to braid knot for the backing kept snagging what little braid was left and leaving me with a loud splash.   Last week we had several schools of rat kings chase bait, so late last night I came up with the best rig I had laying around to attempt one of those if they showed up.  (Listed above)  I decided to use that rig and instead of chasing kings, I'd fish it like I do my lighter gear bouncing along the bottom.  Second or third cast at around 7am several hours into the runout  I got a solid hookup.   Short fight with 10kg line (mono too as the old bait runners don't like braid or so I've been told).  My wife did an excellent job netting and we measured the lizard at a pinch over 66cm.  WOW that is my personal best ever.   Not much action after that but did have some Kingies chase my lure to the boat once but did not strike.   I had another hit later in the morning that tore the tail almost off my lure so it was attracting fish.   We also saw a shark (or at least we think it was)  looked about 20" in diameter swim right under the boat.  Unsure of the length but at least a meter with a fair bit more.  Rue said she saw at least 2meters of fish.  I saw at least a meter but did not see the dorsal or pectoral fins to ID.  Bullshark?  With all the kids water skiing and wakeboarding it made my Mrs a little nervous.  We let the big lizard go so it's still out there hopefully making lots of other ones just like it.

Bear and Rue

 

Edited December 4, 2018 by Sea Ranger
had the wrong size lure

[Sea Ranger]

Brag picture

[masterfisho7]

Great report top flathead one  top trip by the sounds of it 

[Sea Ranger]

Thanks Master   it was a top day.

Water was dirty with lots of Jelly Fish.  We did not find the schools of bait fish in the large numbers we saw last week.   We did find a few but ironically where I caught the Flattie there wasn't any baitfish.   The sounder showed what looked like a good spot to me. 

Bear

[Blackfish]

Thats a nice Hacking Lizard Bear. Congratulations mate.

[rickmarlin62]

Nice report bear  sounds like an enjoyable trip  congrats on the pb mate...rick

[LuckyFil]

Great lizard there mate and that beard is pretty impressive too- ha ha!

[zmk1962]

Great report Bear....glad to see you (and the Mrs) back on the water.  Congrats on the PB !

Cheers Zoran

[mrsswordfisherman]

That is a great report. I hope Mrs Sea Ranger is a fishraider member

[Sea Ranger]

2 hours ago, mrsswordfisherman said:

That is a great report. I hope Mrs Sea Ranger is a fishraider member

I'll have to get her to sign up