Out from Broken Bay on Sunday morning in James’ beautiful Black Rat. The morning kicked off with a promising sign – a full arc rainbow, as we headed east from Barrenjoey Head:
Out to the 140 metre mark where we caught a couple of marlin last week. Things had changed. The bait schools down deep had disappeared from the sounder. The current lines and birds had disappeared from the surface. At the morning radio sched, none of the 40+ boats in the competition had tagged a fish. We realised it was going to be a long hard slog. We ran out the teasers:
I set a garfish on one of our Head Starts five metres behind it:
By midday all we had to show for our efforts was one tiny mahi, and a strike on one of our purple Zuker clone lures. Skipper James made a judgement call to head back inshore. Leaving clear blue 24 degree water in 240 metres, for green/blue 21 degree water in 70 metres. That was a good call. Here’s what happened:
A Facebook reader wrote:
In 70 metres, trolling the pink Pakula in the pic at around 7 knots. Don't be too tough on yourself! Sunday was pointscore day and there were hardly any tagged.
That was our only tagged marlin for the day. But finding that it was one of (maybe) three marlin tagged by the fleet made us feel lucky indeed. On the way back in there was talk about a morning run on Monday. I said straight out that work came first and I couldn’t join them. Then the lads said, ‘kingfish only, we’ll leave the marlin gear at home, and we’ll be back by midday.’
Me: ‘See you at 5.30am!’
Monday morning and James, Hans and myself are heading out to the Valiant Wreck for a live bait session. Slimy mackerel nowhere to be found! Oversized yellowtail the only bait available. We put a few in the bait tank and headed down in the slop to The Ovens, at south Whale Beach. This is a renowned kingfish spot which I used to fish from the rocks back in the 70’s. Just looking at the place from the boat gives me happy vibes. I set up the spreader bar down the middle, with a garfish on a Head Start to starboard and a small bibless lure on the port side. You should never get attached to lures but this is a special one I bought maybe thirty years ago from the Lure Shop, in Cooktown. It still works:
James had run over an offshore bump and quickly saved it as a mark on his Garmin. I knew of a couple of marks to the east too. What we found is shown below:
A Facebook reader writes:
Several ways
So in this pic you can see a vertical mass of small fish
Probably fortescue, mado and yellowtail
With 7 kingfish stacked vertically on top
Firstly, this arrangement is very common at this type of spot
We’ve seen it many times before and confirmed the marks were kings
By dropping down jigs, and hooking up
If you are on an extended reef like Longie or Mugs
There is no order to the arrangement of kings in a school
But if you are in a vast area of mud and sand
With a tiny marker point like this one
They stack up vertically rather than spread out
Spread out a little more in the pic above - because the wreck itself is more spread out. Finally! Have been waiting for this to happen, for months. Reason being we got a new order of 100 gram diamond jigs in last year. Heard great things about them but haven’t tried them much myself because 100 grams a bit too light to get down deep at Texas Reef – in 110 metres - where we’ve been doing all our jigging recently. But a reef in 55 metres just perfect:
I’m thinking two reasons they worked so well? The big central eye provides a target – at the exact point of the jig where the hook is. And the Mylar strips on the hook itself add some realistic flash. Give them a try? At $75 for ten including delivery it’s a fantastic deal:
They were hungry:
Our light jig combo a perfect match for the depth and the fish:
And the diamond jigs blitzed it. Maybe 15 kings? But all around the 60 – 65cm mark:
Packing some Murray Cod lures right now (Wednesday afternoon) for a trip starting early tomorrow morning:
Heading down to Victoria with Fitz to help pick up his new trailer boat. Have scheduled some cod fishing on the Murray. Will report in if anything interesting happens and thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow