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Whale Oil Beef Hooked - Honey Hole Love

Drop Bear

By Drop Bear
in Saltwater

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Drop Bear Community Regular

Drop Bear

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A stunning forecast for Friday saw me and @tugger scramble to the South Passage bar. With the cooler mornings of late we hoped that the 33s would show some nice snapper. :fishing2:

5 to 10 knots WNW made a nice crossing of the bay in the full dark and we quickly made it to the SPB as the first grey light poked through the few clouds and distant rain on the horizon. I tied on a bait jig by torchlight and we made ready for the bar. A simple crossing with one big bump and we were out. The wind more westerly here and perfect conditions saw us at the bait grounds very quickly. About 10 other boats followed us through the bar taking advantage of the good weather before the nasty change predicted for Saturday morning. :sick:

My bait jig had gotten wet at some stage on a previous trip and had only 2 hooks that were not rusted out...:cry:. Tugger found one in the tackle box and we got about 8 yackers. 

Out to the 33s. With not much wind it was easy enough to float down pillies with small sinkers. it is about 65m deep here so a bit tricky to find the bottom without a massive sinker but not too bad. Tugger showed me some subtle changes to my bait presentation so that the hooks were more exposed. I got 2 small snapper and Tugger got one small keeper at about 40cm.

After a few hours and not many fish, with perfect conditions headed to Boat Rock hoping that we could get in close.

There were 3 other boats here, the closest one had 6 blokes on it. With a gentle westerly and not much current we anchored in close, right in the Honey Hole and dropped pillies and live yackers and floated out a slimy under a balloon. 

Bang, Straight on. We pulled in fish after fish but they were mostly small. The boats around us were pretty ****** that we were doing so well and they had not raised a fish.  :baby:

Tugger battled something we hoped would be a cracker only to find a Chinaman fish that we sadly let go. Stunning fish especially when they are young like this one. :91_thumbsup:

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I caught a stack of Trevally. Mrs Drop Bear and I are going to a dinner party on Saturday night. so I phoned the host to make sure we had enough but not too many and we released all the trevally after I got the 5. :queen:

The Moses perch came on in waves. Tugger caught the biggest one. :450_trophy: :452_medal: :453_military_medal:

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I busted a hook off and a sinker off and dodgied up the Paternoster rig. It looked a real mess but still worked fine.

Tugger got a grassy... well we think it is a grassy. We let it go as we had enough fish and weren't sure as it had very rusty colouring. 

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Tugger yelled and I looked down to see a massive whale shark cruising under the boat. I don't think you can see it properly as the sun was in the wrong place but I got a pick of it. So exciting to see it :) I had no idea that they were around here. I think you should be able to make out its tail?

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We bagged out on the Moses and threw one back. :queen: We caught 4 snappers here to add to tuggers one at the 33s  and I took an ok sized goat fish to try.

The wind started up from the north and I had to do some OzFish stuff so we pulled the pin at 1pm.

 

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The wind was still slight and made for a nice trip past Point Lookout and Shag rock.

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The bar was easy as the swell only 1m and we even made it over the shortcut. "If it looks too shallow then give her heaps" but it didn't look too shallow at all today. 

Thanks @tugger for another amazing trip. Your ability to constantly catch fish is amazing. 

Look at all these fish!!!! Yew!!!!! We are going to feast like kings this week!!!!!  :queen:    :queen:   :queen:   :queen:

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I will try and get some photos of the trevally when I cook them up.

:417_fork_and_knife::418_fork_knife_plate:

Thanks

 

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Drop Bear Community Regular

Drop Bear

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19 hours ago, Old Scaley said:

Geez @Drop Bear you are busier than a one armed taxi driver with crabs! I was thinking about you two and wondering how you you were going out there while I was stuck in boring meetings inside a boring office. Grrrr!

I think we have our first nomination for Report Of The Month.

haha thanks mate. Very kind of you. Sorry about your meetings. 

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tugger Enthusiast

tugger

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What a top day on the water the weather was mint and the fishing improved once we stoped at the honey hole but the high light for me is seeing that whale shark I have only seen them on the tv before now and I know how rare they are to see on the east coast. I have been close to a lot of marine animals over the years and now seeing the worlds largest fish "a whale shark" it is another 1 I can tick off that I have seen up close 

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Drop Bear Community Regular

Drop Bear

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6 hours ago, Luvit said:

Seeing the whale shark would have been amazing, what length did you estimate it at?

The rock seems to produce every trip.:1301_clap_tone2:

Its hard to say how long it was. @tugger saw it better than me perhaps he would have a better idea. It was a LOT bigger than the boat. 

I have been to the rock and not caught much when it is rough. but you can get into the honey hole it is a great spot.

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tugger Enthusiast

tugger

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9 hours ago, Drop Bear said:

Its hard to say how long it was. @tugger saw it better than me perhaps he would have a better idea. It was a LOT bigger than the boat. 

I have been to the rock and not caught much when it is rough. but you can get into the honey hole it is a great spot.

I reckon it was just longer then the boat so just over 20 foot long I think they grow to twice that size

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Luvit Newbie

Luvit

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7 minutes ago, Drop Bear said:

looks easy to do when loading boat on trailer. 

That wasn't the problem. 

I don't understand it but, when we came in from a long way out there was a trawler anchored up with his stabilization booms out while at rest. Rather than go behind them we went a couple 100+ meters in front of them thinking we would be causing no problems to anyone. Once past I turn back towards our course and for some reason the trawler had a rope going out 90 degrees to their boat floating on the surface. No floats on the rope or anything. Travelling at 40kmph I only saw it as we crossed it and I quickly slammed the boat throttle into neutral to save the motor tangling or cutting the rope.  The boat still gliding come up tight on the rope and like a ski rope cutting through the water the rope came tight so it must have been fixed at the other end. I only saw it because the conditions were so perfect. We lifted the motor and all seemed OK and we continued on our way. Next stop I noticed the side scan was not working and the there was a banging sound, my fear was the rope had ripped the transducer off and it had.

So something I have never come across before and expected giving a boat at anchor 100-200m wide birth would be ample room. Why they had this rope out with no markers was a complete surprise to me, maybe @aussie123 could enlighten us why this would be?  Because it was a trawler I though they only had nets out when under way.

Anyway it was the only downside of an otherwise beautiful day on the water.

A small teaser to get you through Robbie till Luke's report. The fish I took home, Luke had the rest.

Tusk fish, Pearl Perch, Hussar, Rosy snapper.

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Not including the ones the sharks took off us.

 

 

 

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aussie123 Newbie

aussie123

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1 hour ago, Luvit said:

That wasn't the problem. 

I don't understand it but, when we came in from a long way out there was a trawler anchored up with his stabilization booms out while at rest. Rather than go behind them we went a couple 100+ meters in front of them thinking we would be causing no problems to anyone. Once past I turn back towards our course and for some reason the trawler had a rope going out 90 degrees to their boat floating on the surface. No floats on the rope or anything. Travelling at 40kmph I only saw it as we crossed it and I quickly slammed the boat throttle into neutral to save the motor tangling or cutting the rope.  The boat still gliding come up tight on the rope and like a ski rope cutting through the water the rope came tight so it must have been fixed at the other end. I only saw it because the conditions were so perfect. We lifted the motor and all seemed OK and we continued on our way. Next stop I noticed the side scan was not working and the there was a banging sound, my fear was the rope had ripped the transducer off and it had.

So something I have never come across before and expected giving a boat at anchor 100-200m wide birth would be ample room. Why they had this rope out with no markers was a complete surprise to me, maybe @aussie123 could enlighten us why this would be?  Because it was a trawler I though they only had nets out when under way.

Anyway it was the only downside of an otherwise beautiful day on the water.

A small teaser to get you through Robbie till Luke's report. The fish I took home, Luke had the rest.

Tusk fish, Pearl Perch, Hussar, Rosy snapper.

IMG_4769.thumb.jpg.a10c5f56604a1908aa1edd3c0df37aee.jpg

Not including the ones the sharks took off us.

 

 

 

Sounds like his anchor rope was floating from lack of current and wind.

Anchoring 20-30 ton of boat needs a lot of rope out otherwise they will drag very easily.

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Because it was a trawler I though they only had nets out when under way.

Correct, they can only tow their nets whilst underway

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Luvit Newbie

Luvit

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36 minutes ago, aussie123 said:

Sounds like his anchor rope was floating from lack of current and wind.

Anchoring 20-30 ton of boat needs a lot of rope out otherwise they will drag very easily.

Makes sense. Will be more careful next time. 

I would not have been popular if the motor had cut it.:frantics:

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Luvit Newbie

Luvit

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It was close to the tide change late in the day, so possibly the wind had pushed it side on to the anchor position.

Lesson learnt, have to be thinking more about this stuff when skippering. No real harm done, only to the hip pocket as usual.

 

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aussie123 Newbie

aussie123

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You should always give commercial boats a wide berth because you never know what gear may be outlying from them.

Same goes for the head gear on traps and other things out there, if the current is off there could be up to 200m of rope floating on the surface.

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Drop Bear Community Regular

Drop Bear

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Yes all our fish has gone too. Time to go fishing again :fishing2:

The trevally were fantastic baked whole in southern Indian curry. Trevs are a perfect fish for this sort of thing but they eat a lot better fresh than they do frozen.

We also ate some more Dollies last night. This has been frozen since last trip. It was delicious. No strong flavour? The last bag had a strong flavour... I don't understand.  :huh: Both were yummy :drool:  just different... 

I do have one more bag of Dollies in the fridge... getting very low... its an emergency. I need to go fishing!!!

Hopefully find a window next few days for a trip to Green for some squid. 

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