Dollies Down Deep

Regular readers know that, over the last month or so, we’ve been focusing our offshore fishing efforts on mahi/dolphin fish. The reasons being that one there’s plenty around, and two they’re the fastest growing thing on fins. So the little 60cm models we were catching in February have now grown to 80-90cm. At that size they fight hard and taste great:

With maybe a half dozen trips under our belt in the last few weeks, we’ve made some observations. Anyone can catch mahi by pulling up next the FAD, and chucking in an unweighted hook holding a pilchard cube. But 9 times out of 10 you’ll get an undersized model. The bigger fish are down deep, and sometimes a hundred metres or more off the FAD. They love live bait but are very keen on Head Start garfish too:

What I wanted to try on Saturday was a Head Start garfish trolled fast down deep. To do that, I needed a planer board to run off the downrigger. With these, the faster you go, the deeper they dive. They put a lot of load on the downrigger, but ours can handle it. I had two Z Wings on order but unfortunately they didn’t arrive in time:

Off we went from Bayview boat ramp at the southern end of Pittwater, straight up to the West Head bait grounds. Heaps there:

Straight to FAD 20, 13 miles out from Broken Bay. We got stuck in:

With eleven keepers in the big Dometic all the crew were happy:

Still busting to get back out to the FADs and try fast downrigging using the planer boards. Especially since, earlier this week, Youtube star Sammy Hitzke posted up a video of something very similar:

A Facebook friend asks:

I think so? Sammy Hitzke has converted one of our downriggers to electric and just posted up a video. He’s destroying Gold Coast mackerel with it. Check this out, same weight and same depth as you’re talking about:

Busting to try the same thing so Jeremy and I headed back out to FAD 20 off Broken Bay on Wednesday morning (today.) This is a double FAD set up. Here’s the crowd at the western FAD:

Here’s the spearos at the eastern FAD (maybe 250 metres away):

We ran out some Head Start garfish off the downrigger anyway:

It worked, although the dollies weren’t big. This 68cm was one of six keepers we took home:

Check out Head Starts here:

HEAD STARTS

Sydney fishos should get offshore this weekend. Current and temps are finally picking up – and the weather is finally settling down:

I’ll be away in the high country over the weekend. But if you’re heading out, please let us know how you go? Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow

Sydney mahi fishing guide: Bring the bait, tackle and drift decisions together, including what these deeper experiments did and did not establish.

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