Jiggin' the Disco Biscuit
Top blokes Chris Cooke and Ed Symonds bought a Quintrex 490 recently which I’ve named the Disco Biscuit. They generously invited me out for a run a couple of weeks ago. They’re fairly new to fishing and had mostly light gear so I thought the best target was, Long Reef. Get the burley trail going and have a ball hooking up just legal kingfish, on 10 kilo outfits. We got a heap of hookups - but on way bigger kings than we expected:
Invited for another trip this Tuesday just passed, and wasn’t going to get fooled again. Made sure the big gear was aboard. We launched early at Roseville:
Just by the way I wrote to the NSW Enviro Minister this weekend about the shocking lighting setup at this very popular ramp. Note how the light shines out on the grass instead of on the boat prep area:
We headed to Balmoral Island for live baits. Not easy to score! But we finally put a few in the live bait tank and I had also bought some quality squid from Big Al’s Tackle the day before. Up to Long Reef, with the crew positive and upbeat:
We started off downrigging, and got plenty of strikes:
Only problem - the kings were tiny:
Some keeper pinkies caught on the downrigger meant we had some table fish to take home:
After we tired of small kings and reds the crew agreed it was time to try something new. We headed east to a favourite mark. You could see the kings stacking on top of the bait. The more kings, the tighter the bait stack:
Time to try our new model 100 gram jigs:
Should mention that I’ve had some pushback after changing shape from our older slimline jigs. My usual rule is, don’t change something that’s working! But in this case, I was told that these jigs are super deadly by someone’s whose opinion I respect. The eye of the jig is the strike point and the assist hook is set at that point. These have been working for our clients:
Down went the jig. Fish on:
100 gram jigs effectiveness confirmed! Check them out here? Updating the page to the new shape this week:
With so much rain and rough weather this summer, the kings have had very little fishing pressure. I’ll go on record to say we’re due for a cracker jigging season this autumn and I’m going to be out there as often as the weather permits. Hope you will be too
Andrew Hestelow
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