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Dodged one Donut


Ryder

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I met up with Trevor this morning in the eastern suburbs to continue my rockfishing education.

Conditions were close to perfect, the swell was low and only a light breeze blowing. One other guy was down there and getting into the Blackfish so it looked promising.

Trevor pulled the first fish, then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th.

I had matched his depth, followed his drift, but nothing was working.

I changed leader length, used different size baits.

In all this time I only got one good down, and pulled the hook. FFFFFFF

I was staring at a donut, big time, my back was aching and I was getting a headache.

Last resort was to move.

I went over to the next ledge, got some berley going and snapped my leader on a good fish first drift.

Quickly re rigged, next drift, fish on played out and landed. Phew. The aches and pains disappeared and I soon got another. Trevor pulled two more to get his bag limit.

It was really coming on, my next good down was hijacked by a cormorant. It stole the fish, busted my line,

dropped the fish and got badly tangled in the float. I was still connected and had no option but to land it as gently as possible. It made a mess of the float, biting it, but thankfully it was reasonably calm when we handled it. Snipped all the tangle and it flew off happily.

I got one more fish on Trevor's rod before we called it and left them biting.

post-33162-0-68438600-1427606044_thumb.jpg

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Sounds like a pretty good day all in all. I've had those things take a dead bait from the bottom in 8 meters of water below, thought we had a beauty of a fish on till we saw colour... and feathers!

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Guest hawkesbass

It was a good day out.

Its hard to watch a mate struggle with not getting any fish but we all have those days now and then im just glad you got a few in the end.

I will repair the float and it will live again.

Luckily the cormorant was on the smaller side and easy too handle with a rag over its head to calm it down.

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So did you work out why you weren't getting any downs. There had to be something fundamentally wrong with your rig, bait or drift ? Something fairly subtle probably, were you losing baits without getting downs?

Matt

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I can't explain it, I was using the same rig as Trevor, fixed float, a little sheet lead, swivel, 1and1/2 ft 6lb leader to the hook.

Most times the cabbage came back intact, a few times it was chewed or stripped.

I was getting that bad feeling, I'm not going to catch a thing.

Rather than doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I changed things. Hook, leader length, bait size and drift. Still nothing.

It was when I moved things happened, same rig, same bait.

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Trevor knows what he's doing, I'm sure he would have helped sort it out if it was just float related. Sometimes its about prime position, the school holds up in one spot and if you don't get the float to drift there it can be difficult.

Matt

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Guest hawkesbass

The weighting of the float was a non issue.

Ryder and i would be a foot apart on the drift set at the same depth and the same bait i would get a down and ryders would not get touched.

I said during the day he must of done everthing that gives you bad luck

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