micl

those pike will get ya everytime hey.. nice feed!

1/28 jighead 2H

Thanks for all the replies, sympathy, ideas, legalities, and all the rest of it too. I have to admit i have never thought about spooking fish with keeper net in the water and/ or chucking it in every time we arrive at a new spot. I think i am leaning towards having a removable esky like Rosco 1 has suggested. I too havent heard too much of whiting being caught on SP's. I caught them on Berkley Gulp 3" Minnows Banana Prawn. They worked an absolute treat! A must in the tackle bag. And yes having a handful of photos has made the whole experience bareable, hahah.

oh wow! thats awesome! ill have to pitch the idea to my old man considering it is his boat after all..

Thanks mate. Might give that a go. But I like to keep as much space on the deck as I can in the 4m runabout.

A shower or 2 turned into heavy rain. Coffee in the thermos, forgot the milk. Unpredicted swell resulted in me and my mate feeling a little ill. First whiting caught, escaped out of the keeper net. The first few hours was hell but we decided to push through. On the water by 7.30 and the above events took us up until 1.00 when luck started to come our way. Flicking plastics around my mate managed to land a 31 cm whiting which we bagged and realised the first one we caught had escaped. With heavy weight on the other end of his line he managed to land a nice 66m flattie which was a nice fight on his 2-4kg paired with a 2500 symtre spooled with 4lb braid and 4lb leader. A few minutes after he landed the flattie 4lb line started peeling off my 1000 stradic paired with a 1-3kg T-curve. After minutes of babying this fish to the boat and 5 laps around the boat i managed to land a 45cm trev. Bagged that and we were starting to forget about the terrible start to the morning. I got my plastic back out there and within a few moments i was on again. Not as much of a fight but each time he saw the boat he'd go for a dart. After alot of fun I landed my PB whiting, 44cm. By now we're stoked. It started to quiet down so we decided to try another spot closer to the boat ramp before calling it a day. With a change of lures I was on to what we came for, a nice 36cm bream landed. Not the biggest of bream but definately a nice size with nice broad shoulders. Another 30+cm whiting landed and now we were on top of the world. Not worrying about the traffic we were going to cop on the way home we decided to give one more spot ago. As the boat was about to plane i heard a thud on the side of the boat. As soon as I heard the thud i knew straight away that we had forgot to retrieve the keeper net. I turned to look and saw the rope was still tied to the boat but had snapped away from the net. All fish gone. We were gutted. Due to our stupidity we had lost our dinner. I don't mind at all to catch and release fish, I actually have more days releasing fish than keeping fish, but to think those fish are not back in our waters breeding or on the dinner plate feeding our families.. Devesated. I'm sure we won't do that again. Micl.. P.S. First post, and only had photos of the flattie, whiting, and trev.