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Jan 29 - FAD Dollies (not ideal conditions)


dlvbw

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Hey Raiders,

Been a little while...............been fishing a bit but not a whole lot to report. Plenty of flatties and a few rats, but a bit of a disappointing start to the year.

Anyway, headed out with @fish-aholic(ex-reel'em) on Sunday. Plan was to hit the FADs (everyone is doing it!) in search of some dollies. Early start, launching in the dark around 5am at Roseville. A few boats about but pretty chilled start to the day. Fill up with livies in the harbour in quick time and were off out of the heads in the direction of the Sydney Harbour FAD which is about 9nm (18m) to the SE. The weather was supposed to be 1-2m seas, southerly swell to 1m (from memory). It wasn't. Not long out of the heads it became very uncomfortable and being in a CC very wet. Swell was from the NE and seas were consistently larger that anticipated. We decided to soldier on at very modest speeds and arrived at the FAD in about an hour. Unsurprisingly there were no other boats out there. Initially we dragged a couple of deep diving lures and nailed a couple of small dollies. We then switched to livies and nailed a few more and one rat king. Unfortunately there were no bigger models about so after about 2 hours we slowly made our way back to the coastline. Trip home was dryer and a more comfortable with a slightly following sea. Again we took it very easy, taking out time to come in safely. At around the 50 m mark we dropped some baits and picked up a nice feed of flatties before heading back in. 

Overall, not a bad day, but it would have been nice to be have a dollie for dinner. 

Cheers
Dimage.thumb.png.c6f97131d37406315f98cd0afb75c5fb.png

Pics are MD

Northern - night.PNG

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Good onya for giving it a go and being cautious about the conditions. Paid off in quantity, though not the desired quality of fish...that's the unpredictability of fishing. I love the layout of your vessel, plenty of room to navigate the entire way around it. I know that Dollies are the fastest growing fish species, I wonder how long it takes for them to be a metre long?  Only a matter of time before the fish turn up in numbers and put a smile on the dial of numerous anglers. bn

Edited by big Neil
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On 1/31/2023 at 8:45 PM, jenno64 said:

Well done on persevering through the messy swell! 

There were a few....'what are we doing moments'....mainly because of how wet the trip was....swell and wind at 45 degrees off the bow is the worst.....

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40 minutes ago, big Neil said:

Good onya for giving it a go and being cautious about the conditions. Paid off in quantity, though not the desired quality of fish...that's the unpredictability of fishing. I love the layout of your vessel, plenty of room to navigate the entire way around it. I know that Dollies are the fastest growing fish species, I wonder how long it takes for them to be a metre long?  Only a matter of time before the fish turn up in numbers and put a smile on the dial of numerous anglers. bn

Cheers mate. Determined to get a few good ones this year!

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