Fishing Reports Info

This was Paul's post on one of the fishing forums.

"Been chomping at the bit for the last few weeks to get out for a fish. Yesterday was the first fishable day for weeks so I jumped at the chance to get out with Smithy and my mate Rick.

Had a lazy 6am start and headed out looking for some Spottie Mackerel working bait schools on the surface. We found birds working pretty quickly which signposted the action. Smithy deftly got us alongside the boil and first throw of the slug I was on! But they weren't spotties, instead mac tuna. Still they were really good fun on my light 20lb outfit. We boated 3 or 4 but the school was finnicky and was only surfacing every few minutes and sometimes only for a couple of seconds before they moved on.

I've been pretty keen to get onto some Kings or AJs vertical jigging so we headed wide to give it a go. I learned that it's hard work in deep water and I'm still pretty unco at it. We had no luck on the jigs so changed to livies. We marked a large school of kings on the sounder but they just weren't hungry. Even tried a big plastic but couldn't get a hit. We tried another one of Smithy's spots and again the fish were there but didn't want to play. Picked up one squire here that went about 38cm.

So we turned our attention to trolling minnows for pelagics. Nothing at the first spot but at the second spot we had a triple hookup on the minnows but two spat the hooks and the third took the whole lure. With toothy critters about we changed to trolling livies for a spaniard or wahoo.

We had several baits smashed with no hookups and then a short while later managed to boat a good spaniard.

After that we continued to just miss them, pulling in bait heads and tails but not hooking up.

We could have easily landed 5 or 6 of these spaniards but it just goes to show the difference between a good day and a great day can be a few millimetres.

Overall it was still a pretty good day on the water, nice conditions, a relaxed atmosphere on the boat and a good spaniard.

To be honest I'm counting down the days before I get back out there"