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Big Fishy At Balmoral


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Hello Raiders, I’ve only just started fishing with live baits. I went to Balmoral with a friend at about 11 am and started berlying with bread and slapped on some chum (a pudding bait I made with canned tuna and flour) on my Shuman raider. Pretty soon, we had the livie bucket full of yakkas with an aerator going on. We pinned the yakkas on the nose with our circle hooks but then disaster struck! Two greedy cormorants popped up and the birds tried to take our livies. We switched rigs to a sinking one on our rods and wait for the birds to go away. One they were gone, we set the livies out again with the drags loose and waited. My friend then went to the bathroom and left me to look after the rods when suddenly, the drag was screaming and the rod tip kept jiggling forward. I waited for a bit to let the fish run so it could hook itself and then I tightened the drag up a little bit (twisted the drag twice so it would be half tight - half loose). Whatever that was on my rod kept stripping line off the reel and the fishes head shakes almost made me drop the rod. My friend was heading back and as soon as he saw that I was on, he ran to help land it. I reeled in some more and then the fish tried to snap me off from under the oyster covered pylons and then my friend went to the lower part of the jetty and pulled the line and fish up onto land. I couldn’t believe it…… It was our first Kingfish!!! For a year, we’ve been dreaming of catching kings because we weren’t very experienced with fishing with live baits. We measured it (73 cm so it’s legal), bled it, gut it and scaled it and then put it in the esky. After all that, I checked if we had any yakkas left but we had only one. I burleyed again to get the yakkas feeding so I could catch them easily but then a fanbellied leather jacket came and started eating a piece of floating bread near me. It was so close to the surface and I grabbed it with my bare hands! My friend thought that it was probably sick so it couldn’t react in time (I gave the leatherjacket to a man who was fishing near me). I didn’t get a picture of the leatherjacket but I did get a picture of the kingfish.

 

 

Edited by Little_Flatty
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Great work @TheFishyFisherman, not easy to manage a land based kingie over 65cm and a 73 is a good fish. 
I haven’t heard of “Shuman raider” (not a Shimano?) , but there are a lot of Bonito in the harbour at present and they’ll smash livies or Yakkas (one out under a float or balloon works well too).

Great to see young Raiders posting their catches (please look after the wharf and remove all your rubbish when you leave - I’m sure you do 😊)

Keep those posts coming.

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1 hour ago, Pickles said:

Great work @TheFishyFisherman, not easy to manage a land based kingie over 65cm and a 73 is a good fish. 
I haven’t heard of “Shuman raider” (not a Shimano?) , but there are a lot of Bonito in the harbour at present and they’ll smash livies or Yakkas (one out under a float or balloon works well too).

Great to see young Raiders posting their catches (please look after the wharf and remove all your rubbish when you leave - I’m sure you do 😊)

Keep those posts coming.

May I ask what gear you were using and type of rig?

Edited by faker
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1 hour ago, Pickles said:

Great work @TheFishyFisherman, not easy to manage a land based kingie over 65cm and a 73 is a good fish. 
I haven’t heard of “Shuman raider” (not a Shimano?) , but there are a lot of Bonito in the harbour at present and they’ll smash livies or Yakkas (one out under a float or balloon works well too).

Great to see young Raiders posting their catches (please look after the wharf and remove all your rubbish when you leave - I’m sure you do 😊)

Keep those posts coming.

Land based or boat based Bonito in harbour??

Edited by faker
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16 hours ago, Pickles said:

Great work @TheFishyFisherman, not easy to manage a land based kingie over 65cm and a 73 is a good fish. 
I haven’t heard of “Shuman raider” (not a Shimano?) , but there are a lot of Bonito in the harbour at present and they’ll smash livies or Yakkas (one out under a float or balloon works well too).

Great to see young Raiders posting their catches (please look after the wharf and remove all your rubbish when you leave - I’m sure you do 😊)

Keep those posts coming.

Thanks! Also, I made a typo on the shimano and accidentally wrote shuman. Sorry

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Thanks everyone. Heading out to see why beach today with my shimano eclipse lumo and gonna use beach worms. Hope I get something today☺️. Last time I only got 2 trevally (33 c/m and 35 c/m) and surprisingly I also got a luderick (38 cm). (Casted over the surf cuz I never get anything in the gutters 😭)

Edited by TheFishyFisherman
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  • 1 month later...
On 1/30/2024 at 6:28 PM, faker said:

 

May I ask what gear you were using and type of rig?

I used a running sinker with a swivel and live bait circle hook. I just started doing using floats now though cuz I get more fish that way

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