Saturday 27th - Sydney Harbour

[darrenmason]

Weather looked perfect and had a leave pass so my eldest an I headed out into the harbour.

First light launch and the water was a horrible brown colour - but very calm. We took some bait but started off trying to get some fresh stuff. This proved to be fruitless as no squid and our berley seemed to only bring tiny schnapper around.

Had some frozen squid heads and slimy mackerals from previous trips so we cut those up and tried a few of the channel markers and the southern wedding cake. Heaps of schnapper - some getting close to size but generally about the 20cm mark. Could barely get your bait in the water and it would be attacked by them.

My son finally got a decent hookup and had him pulled around the boat for a few minutes on 8lb line and leader. Few expletives were heard as his leader knot failed though.

Had 1 live yakka that we sent out hoping for more action but apart from a few nervous runs - he stayed in tact.

We went hunting for something other than pinkies but wern't seeing many marks so decided to head over to balmoral to see if any bait was over there.

We were immediately confronted with bust ups near the swimming markers so changed plans and drifted within casting range. Plenty of small tailor when we could get amongst them but we also had a small bonito that pulled the hooks at the boat.

Few bigger bust ups further out that seemed to be much bigger but much more sporadic. We chased hard and invested a lot of casts of little metal slugs and finally got a hook up. It was a mack tuna, about 45cm. Plenty of fight and managed to get the drag warmed up a few times with fast runs. We kept chasing these bust ups for quite a while and managed a 40cm tailor, another bonito that pulled hooks as it reached the boat and two more mack tuna about the same size that we landed. They were hard to get as they were moving really fast and even when they came up right next to the boat the lure had to be moving in the right direction at the right speed to get their interest. I felt our hook ups were more luck than skill. Heaps of fun though.

Called it a day a bit before 3pm and headed back. Tuna were bled, iced, filleted, battered and fed the family. No photos for the day sorry.

 

 

[Rebel]

Great report. Well done.

[Pickles]

Great report Darren - great weather to get out and into it.

[jenno64]

nice work, how are the macs on the chew?