Spring Time is King Time

October 30, 2019

There’s only one thing more frustrating than catching nothing, on trip after trip. And that’s getting back from a fishless session - to find your inbox full of fish pics, sent by successful clients That’s been my story for most of October. Clients are having no trouble at all:

October started with a great update from Brad Wilson, who runs Sea Lord Howe Charters on the island. He’s been putting his clients onto some cracker kingies. This one arrived on the same day I got home sunburnt and salt caked after thrashing the water at Long Reef to foam – for no result:

Hey Andy, thanks for sending the gear out! Went for a run this morning before work, 5-9am ended up with about 90kgs of cleaned fish.

Gun fisho Don Cummings from Coffs Harbour has been slaying them pretty much all October. While I'm pull the brim of my cap down on returning to the boat ramp, in case anyone asks me how I went:

Hi Andy, hope you are well. Great weekend out off Coffs Harbour. Took the girl for a spin for the first time. She had 3 x Kings and 1 x Amberjack on the deck before 9.00am

That was only the start for Don, who followed up with this white hot session:

We had a solid session out wide over the weekend with gun fisherman Adrian Grey.. First drop in 80m fishing 250-300g jigs produced some solid kings. The photo was taken after the first drop.

Closer to home, and keen Swansea angler Murray McGuire has been putting some nice keepers on the cleaning table:

Had a great day on the kings yesterday. Smallest was 70cm. Caught most on livies but also got one on a popper

Last Thursday was Make or Break Day. Promised myself that, if I couldn’t turn a reel, I would sell the boats and all my tackle, and take up lawn bowls. The savings would be fantastic! Fitted a downrigger to the new Atomix 420SC, hoping to decide whether out to the side or straight back worked best:

Launched early last Thursday. I’m finding the new boat is super easy to launch and operate so hopefully will be doing a lot more kingie chasing this summer:

The plan was, downrigging. I didn’t have much intel to go on! Excepting a short video from the Drone Shark app Facebook page showing a school of kings swimming off Bondi Beach the day before:

The first requirement was live bait. After trying at three different spots – with no result – I knew I was on track for another disaster. Then (friend) Mev called:
‘Are you getting any Andy?’
‘Can’t even catch the bait, cobber’
‘I’ve got some to spare. Meet me at Middle Head.’
How good is it, to have mates like Mev. Out around South Head, bridled a live bait, set the yellowtail off the downrigger weight ten metres down. BANG:

What a magical session it was. Just goes to show – if we didn’t know already – how important perseverance is, in this game we all love:

 

And how deadly is downrigging, for kingfish. Because when I got home, almost everyone else had had a tough day. We’ve proved it a hundred times and Thursday proved it again. Downriggers are deadly, for kingfish and mackerel. Here’s our video on downrigging off Sydney:

 

 And here’s details on our model:

Heading out tomorrow morning for another session and will post to Facebook if anything interesting happens. Thanks for reading and get back to me with any questions whatsoever,

Andrew Hestelow
Managing Director
http://www.downriggershop.com
Tel. 0402075000

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