Mackerel a plenty!

First up I apologise for not getting this report up quicker, but I had some video footage I wanted to sort out and upload first.

What a great week of weather. And luckily it held for the weekend. Our plan was to leave Friday afternoon after work. Stay the night in Horseshoe Bay, and head to the shoals first thing Saturday. We left the ramp about 5.30pm and had an easy 25knot run out across a light afternoon wind chop. No swell, so it was obviously calm out wide. We tried a couple of markers on the way, but quickly lost light and called it quits. I wanted to be anchored in the Bay before dark.

After dinner the lights of the boat had attracted some small fish life. So the two boys spent about an hour catching small Grunter and GTs. They had a ball, most of the GT's were no more than 6in long! But there were plenty of bites to keep them happy. But the fish of the night was a nice little Sucker fish Tania caught. Lachy though it was great when it sucked onto the lid of a container!

Next morning we woke to glassed out conditions. I upped the anchor and headed off. Tania and Sebastian stayed asleep in the cabin, but Lachy joined me for the smooth ride out. We maintained an easy 30knots and were at location is quick time.

For the next couple of hours we fished various shoal marks in search of a school of Nannygai. But we found just about everything but! One shoal was loaded with Bludger Trevaley, another with HUGE trigger fish. With only 1 small Nanny in the eski, we decided to head wider in search of some Spanish Mackerel. We arrived to find a couple of other boats already on location, but large schools of fish were marking on the sounder all over the place. Visibility was stunning, and we could see schools of Spanish Mackerel right under the boat. There must have been dozens. But enticing a bit in the crystal clear water was difficult. And every time we did manage a hookup, it was sharked in quick time!

These videos show just how shy the fish were, a pillie thrown over the side is initially ignored, and my bumpa-bar is bearly looked at.

However, we did manage to pull about 1 in 5 fish off the bottom and beat the sharks to the surface. An expensive and exhausting exercise, but it got us a couple of nice Spangled Emperor and Small Mouth Nannygai.

On the way home we gave the NC a try for some Doggies. I wasn't holding my breath, as it was about 1pm. But a few casts of a 40g slice saw us hooking up one after the other. And in the next hour or so we boated 13 fish in the 53-55cm range, and let a few smaller specimens go. Oh, and I should also mention, one of my doggies got pummeled on the surface by a huge GT. Was an amazing sight to see. Unfortunately he did hook up, and peeled the 20lb braid off like there was nothing there. Needles to say, it ended pretty quickly!

We came home about 3pm with the worst part of the entire trip being the last 500m into the harbor. And that was just a little afternoon seabreeze! Love it! Wish we got more weather like that.