queensland Off-Shore 7/6/09

[Keechie]

Headed off-shore yesterday on "In The Black" charters, i highly recommend these guys the decky and skipper are a great hand. Hopped on the boat about 10:30, a little later than intended due to the light storm that blew through. After an hour and a half we finally reach the first spot, a first drift with the bait jig and my mate michael hooks up brings it up and a nice yakka and a beautiful little pearly, nothing else that drift so we pull back around and drop the baits down (squid and pilchards) whilst the decky is dropping the bait jig back down. A few good little hits by small stuff first drift and no takers, second drift a few bumps then bang one of the other guys hooks up on a livey and up comes a nice moses pearch about 40cm or so. Next drift the same guy drops down a fairly large yakka and he gets nailed and unfortunetly lost the fish, yakka came up with no scales and twitching. Finally a few undersized fish hit the deck and up comes the first legal pearly. After about 3 legal fish we decide to hit out the deep, half an hour later we are there in 130m of water. We drop to the bottom and instantly there is a double hook up on pearly's at the back of the boat and the youngest guy is struggling with a nice kingy about 61cm that gave him a great fight. Pearlies were coming up one after another, the bait would hit the bottom and bang already getting pulled into the reef whilst in free spool. You knew if you were debaited if you were on the bottom for 5 seconds without a hit. we came accross a school of kingies about 60-80cm long that were sitting 40m off the bottom, drop your bait down and bang lines peeling off in free spool click into gear and what a fight and what a tangle they created everyone hooked up at the back of the boat on kingies pulll it up and huge tangle, michael decided to handline what he presumed was his line up and noticed that the braid change colour, up comes a pearly and a kingy, the pearly was huge, we swear it would of eaten the kingie if it had the chance, we estimated it to of been about 80cm as the kingie itself was 61cm and was no-where near the size of the pearly it was then whilst awaiting for the net the pearly dropped off and slowly descended back down to the depths, it was then decided that that was actually my line. 3 other lines came up with the culprits on the other end (kingies), after a few jokes cracked by the skipper and a few more drops with some really nice pearlies in return we decided to move in a bit closer, quick 5 minute move and the skipper mentions,"that its much shallower, still 113m haha. first drop hits the bottom and bang, this fish is pulling some line and 2 other guys hook up around me. On the 2 other lines 3 pearlies came up, after slugging it out on this fish its finally closer to the boat, after the calls of it being a nice snapper i was getting excited got it up and its in the net a beautiful pearl perch, notice that the top hook is missing, damn may of been that snapper. Measure the fish and he goes a very solid 63cm and weighed 3.5 kilo's once gilled and gutted. The next few drops resulted in some good pearlies around the 50cmish mark and last few drifts resulted in some just legal or undersized pearlies. Finished the trip home with a fairly glassed out ocean, managed to doze off a bit on the way back to the scarborough marina and hit my head on the table giving everyone a bit of a laugh, michael tieing the younger fella's shoes together all this contrubted to making it one of the best trips i have been on. Plenty of fish were caught which was suprisingy because at 1:30 we only had 2 legals in the esky.

Thank you michael for the trip out, best of luck to your dad for his fishing trip tomorrow. If there is any spelling error's i am blaming it on my extremely sore arms haha. Sorry about such the long report for only 1 photo.

Nic

[shortie]

good work Nick.

Glad to see you amongst a few

[AZZA]

Sounds like a great days fishing and that is a horse of a pearly

[Rocket75]

spelling mistakes forgiven! thanks for sharing sounds what sounded like a great day.

Rocket

[dhess]

Good one mate! Where abouts did you guys fish?

[noname]

you always fall asleep nic, whats the go there? falling off eskies bangin ya head? might head up that way soon as there are some good spots close by and checking the diary, hmmmm. bloody ripper pearlies for around here nic, well done.

rob

[Keechie]

Dhess, i am not sure of the spots that we fished

hahha rob i think it all cocmes down to me getting hardly any sleep the night before, to busy thinking about the trip in the morning haha.

[dhess]

I meant off which general area. e.g. off caloundra off southport?

[Smithy]

Out of Redcliffe and would have been fishing the grounds between Caloundra and South Passage Bar.

[dhess]

Thanks Smithy.

That narrows it down a lot. :laugh:

[Brian D]

wopper pearlie there mate - friggin huge, good on ya