Botany Bay 29/05

[wakd]

Hi Folks,

Four of my mates bought me a fishing charter for my birthday in January, and we finally got around to organising it and headed out with Scotty Lyons of Southern Sydney Fishing Charters yesterday morning. The sky was clear, but a very chilly westerly was already starting to blow when I left my house at 5.30. We arrived at the wharf, and headed off for the first stop, Molineaux Point (container wall at Botany). After circling around for a few minutes and checking the sounder, Scott anchored up and threw a handful of pellets into the water. I had one of my bream rods with me, rigged with a bass minnow, so while Scott rigged up the bait rods for my friends, I dropped my line in, and came up tight on an average trevally on the first drop. For the next hour or so, we pulled in about 25 trevally (kept about 15), with my bass minnow outfishing the bait by a small margin. At one point I dropped my bass minnow down and got hit hard. The fish tore off at speed under heavy drag, and we knew this wasn't a trevally, but a king. The first run was blistering, and he took me under the anchor rope with a lot of line. I gained a little line back when he turned and took another run, then pinged me

The trevally slowed down, and I then found my lure had been "swiss cheesed", so Scott rigged me with a paternoster, a small hook and some squid, and I managed to get two leatherjackets, my mates got another 3 amongst them. The jackets are great bait thieves though, and even on a graphite rod with 4lb fireline, I could only just feel the bites. During this hot session there were a few other boats around us that seemed to be catching very little, I have no idea why, somehow Scotts boat seems to attract fish (good berley and anchoring technique is the real reason I suspect)! We then went to get some livies in Yarra Bay, and managed to snag a few garfish and some yakkas, and slow trolled them around the point for zip, so we headed to the third runway and trolled some rapalas. We picked up three good size tailor doing this, and I dropped another good one when it jumped and shook the lure free. In the afternoon, the wind had picked up more, and we threw some plastics around for flatties at Brighton. I got two undersized fish and that was it, seems the flatties didn't want to play. Got back to the wharf at about 1pm, then went home and had a massive fish feast - trevally sashimi (which was sensational, I won't be throwing trevors back any more!), and BBQ'd tailor. Everyone had a great day out, and Scott (and his deckie Nathan), were an absolute wealth of knowledge, I'd highly reccomend a day out with him especially to the guys who fish the Bay regularly, or have troubles getting fish there. Scott is releasing a DVD soon too - "A Day on the Bay", which will be worth looking out for. Unfortunately no photos as my camera is cactused at the moment, and my mates forgot to bring theirs.

Cheers,

Ben.

[Outnumbered]

sounds like you had a great day out , and no boat to wash down at the end of it.

good on your mates for springing for the day for you

[Byron]

Nice one Ben,

So you think we can go out and replicate those results ourselves???