We persisted for a while longer and soon enough I am hooked upto something HUGE! It was a no win battle for either fish or foe, with me gaining line back, only to lose it again, I was tiring but the fish tired first and after some tense moments some expletives were fired across the ocean, for as the fish revealed itself from the depths I was a dirt great big Chinaman, the biggest I had ever seen, let alone caught, easily a 15kg fish, to say I was disappointed would be saying the least, I was down right pissed off, I was totally spent, back aching, arms numb, hands locked up for what I felt at that moment was nothing, so much so, once I managed to get the hooks out I threw it back without even thinking of a photo, but I assure you, the one Mal's missus caught on his main pain would be nothing more than a snack for this beast. However, its at this point I will mention that my newly purchased outfit, A saltist 40H (high speed model) and my New T-curve Deep Jig 500 handled the job brilliantly and I couldn't be happier with how it performed. Soon aftert I managed to boat a nanny and a red before heading off into the cab for some sleep ready for when the tide stopped and current would be down at midnight. Well that didn;'t happen cos as soon as my head hit that pillow I was out like a light and didn;t awaken until about 3am. During my sleepy time, Ronnie (3-rats), Adrian (Eugah) and Ethan (Adrian's son) all managed to land big chinaman, so they all know how I feel in that respect.
The next morning we wake up to breakfast of a bit of chicken, some chocolate, lollies and beer (Breakfast of champions I tell you) and head off in search of more trout. Whilst sounding the area we were once again on the troll, picking up another 2 spanno's before dropping anchor on a likely looking bommie.
Bottom fishing was slow, with pickers rife, only small stuff being brought to the boat, but the box was still slowly being added to, with a couple more trout, tricky (redthroat emperor) and a couple of Long nose emperor (though I think these were caught the day before and I forgot to mention them earlier). GBF heads in early because he's starting to get low on fuel, even though Ozbee reminded him that he had an additional 60l on board if he needed it, speaking of which, I'm not sure how long he had to wait to get in because the water level was low in the creek and the tide was still falling....I'll be interested in how far they had to push for in some very croccy looking water.
We head towards Bowden reef, where we see trout boats and a few dories working the shallows, so we stay a bit deeper and still manage a few small trout for the box, Stef pulls up on a some good looking ground and gets onto a patch of small mouth nannies, we head over to join him, and can't buy a bite, it was even more frustrating to see another boat 50-100m away from us is getting into them too....talk about annoying. We tried everything a bit of burley to steal the fish from the other boats, a variety of baits, things juist weren't happening for us.
We persist with a few more spots, only to wait for the tide to come in before heading for home. Again a bit of excitement on the way in we spy 3 or 4 whale's at the 12 mile shoals splashing and carrying on, so ozbee guns it over handing me the video camera to get some footage. Well I tried to keep the camera on the whale's on the way over but only managed to get lots of good shots of the sky and dash as we bounced out way over, but I think I managed to get some good stuff once we got right up close. Soon though we had to boogie with a big cargo ship bearing down on us we make a beeline for home, Ozbee showing us some of the landscape along the way, though I was more interested in the miles and miles of good bottom with loads of fish holding (my guess is they were grunter), something I want to head down that way just to have a go at some very close shoal.
We get into the creek but still have to wait a good hour or more for more water to come in before making it back to the ramp, then it was back to ozbee's place, for clean up and we are on our way home. Our totals catch in the obligatory lawn of death shots: