A few kings about

[Larkin]

Gday Raiders,

was greeted by a beautiful sunrise this morning as I headed out for a fish.
First hit the bait grounds and loaded up on livies. 

Decided to try trolling along Kurnell cliffs - slow trolled a large slimie for an hour for nothing.

Headed up to maroubra area but not much happening around there either - just a 40cm morwong and 34cm pannie - both released. Drift was fast at 4klm/h & no baitfish. 

Left to try out deep where I had caught some large flatties in the past. Picked up a nice 55cm blue spot to take home.

Then back down jibbon way to try the local flatty drift - hooked 2 fish pretty quick in succession, but got cut off by green toads on the way up. Didn’t want to play that game today, so left to chase kings instead.

I drop down a 25cm yakka and it gets grabbed within 30 seconds. Fish does some nice runs and I get it up within a meter of the surface - can see it’s around 80cm, then my line snaps above the swivel. Line must of scraped on reef at some point during the morning and I didn’t notice. 
I was also down to my last two yakkas. Chuck out another and a chunky 70cm fish comes up - which I decide to keep.
I try and catch more yakkas, but there’s too many kings around making them skittish. I did manage to catch two after trying for half an hour. One jumped to freedom out of my hand as I was about to rig it. The second wasn’t so lucky and only lasted a minute as another king grabbed it - around 65-70cm, released.
Plenty of kings, but hard to catch bait.
called it a day.

Edited April 24 by Larkin

[linewetter]

What a killer sunrise!  Some nice fish caught as well.  How do you plan to cook up the flathead and kingy?

[Yowie]

Good work Chris. A nice mixed bag, with a good sized blue spot and a couple of kingies. The mongrel toads still about.

[jenno64]

Nice mixed platter Chris!

Shame about the lost king but you pulled together a great bag as usual🙏🏻

[Larkin]

11 hours ago, linewetter said:

What a killer sunrise!  Some nice fish caught as well.  How do you plan to cook up the flathead and kingy?

Thanks linewetter!

The flatty will get its usual beer battering - can’t go wrong with a crispy batter 😋 

The kingies usually get eaten raw (sashimi with soy/ginger/wasabi or ceviche) sometimes I’ll pan fry a fillet with some olive oil, sprinkle of garlic salt, parsley flakes, pepper.
But might try something different tonight with the kingy.

3 hours ago, Yowie said:

Good work Chris. A nice mixed bag, with a good sized blue spot and a couple of kingies. The mongrel toads still about.

Was a tough day Dave, with long periods between bites & a fair bit of travel. Those toads did me in - no matter how fast I was reeling.

Lucky the kings were on.

1 hour ago, jenno64 said:

Nice mixed platter Chris!

Shame about the lost king but you pulled together a great bag as usual🙏🏻

Thanks Rob!

Always good to check your lines when reef fishing. I hooked a fish earlier in the day that went to reef - bit of scraping, gave some slack line and it came out. Must of scuffed my line.

[zmk1962]

Nice few meals there Chris... you've certainly perfected being nimble and agile with your fishing on the jetski ... lots of target species and spots and the results to show for it.

Cheers Zoran

PS - the toads were out at browns the last two trips ... biting off 2.5kg sinkers near the surface ... B&%$%@RDS !

[Larkin]

On 4/25/2024 at 1:03 PM, zmk1962 said:

Nice few meals there Chris... you've certainly perfected being nimble and agile with your fishing on the jetski ... lots of target species and spots and the results to show for it.

Cheers Zoran

PS - the toads were out at browns the last two trips ... biting off 2.5kg sinkers near the surface ... B&%$%@RDS !

A lot of riding that day. Lucky it was flat. was jetting around at 45-50klm/h normally when it’s swelly can only travel around 30-35

The toads are definitely hanging around this year

[bessell1955]

What a great photograph of the sunrise and even better ones of the fish.