Hello Dolly!

Between last months howling nor easterlies keeping the warm water up north, and Cyclone Oma producing huge seas, the dolphin fish season in Sydneyhas been way overdue. FINALLY, last week, the swell settled down:

and the sea temps cranked up:

Early in the week friend and client Jason sent through a weekend report. He’d gone to the broken Bay wide FAD, and had some helpful intel to share:

Bruce Clarke’s report doubled the motivation:

Any dollie over 80 centimetres gets my jimmies rustling. Booked in the crew for Tuesday and launched on Monday afternoon. With a couple of hours of daylight left, headed for the artificial reef off Sydney’s South Head. Down went the jig:

Mostly kingfish, of course:

But also some solid salmon in the mix:

Back into Clontarf where I found an unused mooring, had a quick bite to eat, and got into the bivvy bag to dream of the big day ahead. Up early the next morning and around to Balmoral wharf to pick up Oscar and Fitz. Stop to load up on live bait then headed east, past the Heads and out to the open sea. The question was, where to go? Just before leaving we heard that the FAD we usually fish had gone missing:

The best alternative I could come up with at short notice was the trap field about eight miles off the heads. That’s been a reliable producer for years. And when we got there, no trap floats. On to 12 mile reef, just four miles further out. Dead. But the water was blue, the temperature was up, and the current was charging. Okay, four more miles to FAD 21. That’s where everything came together:

Quality mahi were stacked and hungry on the upstream side of the float. And we took full advantage of it:

What a day. Great weather and stacks of fish:

The dollies giving our 702 casting combos a major workout:

A client writes:

Here’s the perfect outfit cobber:

7 foot 2-piece 98% carbon casting rod
Which will cast a 40 gram lure 65 metres
Matched with
Our Ryobi 4000 reel
Spooled with
200m 15 kilo colour change braid
With an FG knot to 3 metres 10 kilo fluorocarbon
For just $275
Or rod only $75
Great gear and great price

702 MAHI COMBO

And there’s a sweetener, to this offer. The downside of the public FADs is that, on weekends, you might be competing with anything from 10 to 20 boats, when trying to catch a dolphin fish. What’s even worse is that the FADs are becoming very popular with spear fishermen. Which is why a lot of blokes are putting out their own FADs:

That’s not permitted – but it happens. And because 1. we are out there twice a week and 2. the blokes deploying these private FADs mostly put them in the same spot every year, I usually have some good marks for them. You can imagine how good it is to have your own private fish attractor, which sees hardly any pressure:

I used to post the marks on our Facebook page. But now we have 15000 readers there that wouldn’t be fair to the actual owner – who made all the effort to make and deploy the FAD:

But what I can do is, pass on marks to clients who buy the 702 combo. All I ask is that you sent me a pic or a report, of how you go out there. That’s a fantastic offer, but I’m sorry to say it’s for Sydney clients only – just because that’s the only area I have the waypoints for. Note there are no guarantees! They can appear - or disappear - overnight. But we find a few. If you haven’t fished for dollies you’re really missing out on something. I can tell you that Fitz gets very excited:

And never forget how delicious they are on the plate:

Thanks for reading and please get back to me with any questions whatsoever
Andrew Hestelow

Also in Tackle News