Jigging Port Stephens NSW Friday 4th November

[Downrigger]

G’day lads,

Up to Port Stephens on Thursday night and into the rack early, in preparation for a pre-dawn start today. But we slept through the alarm! So it was in full sunshine around 7.00AM that we blasted up the Port in Loop's beaut Whaler 24 CC and headed east, for the wide grounds and a day’s jigging.

Weather conditions were ideal but we like a bit of current at this spot to get the kingfish stacking up, over the bumps. When the current backs off they spread out all over the place and it then becomes the job of going to previously known marks, and checking for small shows on the sounder. We scored a few kingies:

Bonito:

massive leatherjackets:

and some weird and wonderfuls:

But for us, the day wasn’t as good as our last two trips in October. Water temp in 200 metres was 20.5 but nearly 22 half way out, so reducing every mile we travelled. As usual with this fishy spot there’s always something to see – in this case dolphins everywhere, pods of small striped tuna popping up constantly, and whales galore. A cruise ship even stopped by, so that passengers could check out the whales:

Either that, or the captain was a kingie fanatic trying to suss out the waypoint of our sneaky spot. On the way back in, I met Alex who I know through the weekly report. He and his crew had done much better on the closer grounds, and held up some beaut kingies to show us:

Hopefully we'll get there again this week and will put a post on AFO if anything interesting happens. Cheers, Andy