People: Me, Neville, Scott & Leon in the morning, Me & Moody Marlin PM
Duration: All day
Tide:
Weather: Generally good, Southerly breeze
Bait: Mackerel & Crab
Rigs:
Results: Tope, Smoothound, Thornbacks, Bull Huss, Lsd
Report: I picked Neville and his 2 sons Scott & Leon up at 9am and headed straight to the mark that's served us well this year. Neville and his 2 boys had caught some Smoothies with me last summer, but I hoped to put them on something bigger this time. We started slowly, but Neville & Scott managed to catch a couple of Huss, and with about 40 minutes left to go, I could see young Leon getting a little despondent. Then all of a sudden his rod buckled over. I got great amusement watching him getting pulled all over the boat, but he kept a cool head and after a spirited fight we got his fish in the boat, a male Tope in the 20s. He followed that up about 15 minutes later with another one of about the same size. The grin on his face said it all.
I dropped them back to the pier and picked up MM at about midday. Needless to say we headed straight for the same mark. We were barely taught on the anchor when we started catching again. As well as more Tope, we had Smoothound to 6lbs, Thornback Ray (x3) to 8lbs and Bull Huss to 13lbs. It was Moody who continued his recent hot streak, by catching the 2 biggest fish of the day. Both fat females, the 1st of which I reckoned was over 40lbs, with the Length x girth formula putting her at 44lbs, and the 2nd fish, which felt every ounce of 50lbs, measured 157cm L and 68cm G. The formula would put her at 55lbs. I'm starting to get fed up taking photos of MM with fish, so I'm hoping his hot streak ends soon. For the record, half the Tope on Saturday were caught on wire traces, and half were caught on mono. The experiment continues.