Two days at Port Stephens

With fishing tough here in Sydney, I decided a month or so ago to move the boat up to Port Stephens. That’s worked. Catching end of season mahi in May, and kingfish on the jigs scored on the last couple of trips. With two days and a keen crew available we headed back up there on Wednesday. Day one, up to Broughton Island, looking for longtail tuna, and fishing live garfish down a burley trail:

No joy. We caught a few bits n’ pieces, but never found anything big:

Felt really disappointed for the crew who were so keen, and had driven such a long way. But that’s fishing. Next day – Thursday – had a way better forecast. Rowan joined me for a long run to the deep reefs. Lots of fish marking but no kingfish stacks on the screen. The only other boat out there confirmed things were tough:

Plenty of strikes on the jigs, but not what we were chasing:

Regular crew member, Drax, has had a hip replacement and is steadily on the mend. He hasn’t let that affect his love of jigging. He uses a Daiwa Tanacom 500 electric reel we sold him years ago. Drops the jig to the bottom, turns on electric retrieve, lifts and drops rod tip. That’s working:

I gave it a try using our light Dragon 7000 electric reel:

It makes jigging so easy! Note that, when we hook up, the reel motor is switched off? And the fish is fought to the boat in the usual way. But for anyone with medical issues (like Drax) or getting old (like me) these reels are fantastic:

We haven’t got enough stock to add these to our website. But if you’re interested, drop me an email. The full combo including reel, overhead rod, 600 metres of braid and a jig to get you started is $750. But note - this is a light combo. Not suitable for lifting big blue-eye and bass groper. It’s not a winch, but if you use it the way we do it works great. While I was jigging Rowan made the commonsense decision to drop baits into the fishcloud at 140 metres. A constant procession of delicious table fish came aboard. Here’s a typical longfin perch:

Double nannygai hookups were very common:

Some ooglies in the mix:

No kings! But we were overcompensated with a big swag of table fish. Learnt a few lessons and will be back out there soon. Call or email if you want more info on the Dragon electric reel combo? Great bit of gear. Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow

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