Gurnard

[JonD]

Plan was to head offshore and dive (free dive for paper nautilus )but unfortunately these amazing creatures seem to of moved on. Had a 3ft kids rod onboard with a little 2000 spin reel and 8lb braid so decided to change my plan and catch a few reef fish for a family meal. Things didn't seem overly promising when I discovered the small bag of bait I thought I had picked up turned to be fish skin from some fish fillets of a previous trip!!!! Anyway dropped down two hooks with fish skin on and was instantly rewarded with a double hookup of a 42cm snapper and a 39cm wrasse. The fishing remained good for about 1hr with a mix of species including a pretty gurnard. So much fun on the silly little rod, had to play these small fish right to the boat and hope the sharks didn't get them.

A mate called up to ask if I would head out in his new boat with him as he was a bit nervous given our bar crossing was pretty poor. So I agreed to pull the pin and shoot home (currently 12k offshore) and drop my boat off and meet back at the ramp in 1hr. 

The new $220,000 6m trailer boat is a weapon, powered by the latest Yamaha 300 and just about every gadget available including flir camera and pie oven etc!!!. The bar crossing now had a maritime 9m vessel sitting just inside in the sheltered side with the skipper turning boats back from the crossing due to wave and swell height. Luckily for us the maritime officer knows I work commercial vessels from here and had also just seen me cross the bar with my smaller boat, so allowed us to head out.

The boat was impressive as I got to run it head on into some pretty nasty slop at around 30kts until we reached large schools of yellowfin tuna around 20 miles offshore. These were only surfacing as they smashed through bait schools for a brief few seconds before vanishing again and again!!! We tried several methods but couldn't get a hookup. Unlike the bluefin over the last few weeks that would simply swim to the boats and take just about any lure presented to them.

A sudden westerly (pushing offshore from where we are) hitting over 30kts had us turning for home in a quick dash for protection. These sudden winds are why boats with gig hp are so good here, simply so we can throttle down to get out of it quick and quickly we did.  This boat flies, quite literally we were skimming from the tops of waves at around 35-38kts on that run home. 

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by JonD

[BigHorse]

Nice report mate, what boat does your mate have. From what i've heard from you it seems to be an absolute beast

Well done👍

[Isaac Ct]

Nice variety of fish. My dad's brother lives down in shellharbour and he is saying the tuna are on but they are only taking small baitfish. Gurnard taste pretty good to, that's if you can get over the beautiful colours on them.

[Blackfish]

Great read Jon. Your Mates boat certainly sounds like a beast.

[JonD]

17 minutes ago, BigHorse said:

Nice report mate, what boat does your mate have. From what i've heard from you it seems to be an absolute beast

Well done👍

Its a new 6m Edencraft with every option available.

7 minutes ago, Isaac Ct said:

Nice variety of fish. My dad's brother lives down in shellharbour and he is saying the tuna are on but they are only taking small baitfish. Gurnard taste pretty good to, that's if you can get over the beautiful colours on them.

We've had an incredible season here with bluefin and albacore and now those yellowfin have moved down from JB. Last week I was skippering an urchin boat on the inside of Montague and had yellowfin smashing the paper nautilus. My daughter caught over 20 bluefin fishing solo from her little zodiac on the north end of Montague, todays she's out there chasing the yellowfin solo again.

[zmk1962]

Top report Jon. That Edencraft certainly sounds like a weapon and your daughter's efforts are truly inspirational.

Cheers Zoran

[Rebel]

Well done. Super report.

[Centrepin]

I don't care about the boat, the Gurnard is amazing.

I know they are in NZ. Just sensational.

Thanks so much,

 

Centrepin