Snapper Report 28/10 - WOOHOOOOO!
Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2016 7:29 am
So as many of you might have read, I've been giving the old reds a red hot go without a huge amount of success to date. My initial plan was to go throw some plastics around because I was feeling lazy. But then I was flicking through an old Rex Hunt book which mentioned 3-5 metres off Elwood at night, which is a stones throw from North Road ramp, so I thought, stuff it I'll give it a solid nudge.
Launched at 8pm and sounded along the depth contour line at 5metres. Not much doing on the sounder, possibly to early for the fish to move right in close. Finally found an OK arch nothing massive so decided to give it a whirl. Two hours of solid burlying, cubes and pot suspended a metre off the bottom. No result. Wind was blowing westerly, so I thought that the fish might be pushing in that direction so decided to sound to the west towards Port Melbourne. Found this bad boy looking like he was having a bit of a late night chew:
Normally I get so excited when I see a fish that I just grab the anchor, hurl it in in a mad rush and almost fall out of the boat. Decided to take my time, push up wind and try and position myself properly.
Burleyed hard. At about 11.30 after an hour and a half of pumping burley in I thought I was on to another dead loss, then one of the rods buckled over.
I was looking at cat memes on my phone and it took me completely off guard. But this one was well and truly hooked!
A few minutes later I had this fish of 89cm on the boat (don't have scales so not sure of weight, maybe 6kg?)
Bloody stoked! First big snapper for the new boat! So the moral of the story is persistence and patience pays off. I've been putting in the hours on the water, and have gotten pretty despondent at times, but just like anything in life, if you keep on trying you'll get there in the end.
As a side note, North Road boat ramp closes at 11pm which I wasn't aware of, so I got locked in. Had to walk home with the fish in a backpack with the tail hanging out the top. By this stage it was about 1.30am stopped at 7/11 and yeah I got some pretty weird looks. Lol.
Cheers,
Goat
Launched at 8pm and sounded along the depth contour line at 5metres. Not much doing on the sounder, possibly to early for the fish to move right in close. Finally found an OK arch nothing massive so decided to give it a whirl. Two hours of solid burlying, cubes and pot suspended a metre off the bottom. No result. Wind was blowing westerly, so I thought that the fish might be pushing in that direction so decided to sound to the west towards Port Melbourne. Found this bad boy looking like he was having a bit of a late night chew:
Normally I get so excited when I see a fish that I just grab the anchor, hurl it in in a mad rush and almost fall out of the boat. Decided to take my time, push up wind and try and position myself properly.
Burleyed hard. At about 11.30 after an hour and a half of pumping burley in I thought I was on to another dead loss, then one of the rods buckled over.
I was looking at cat memes on my phone and it took me completely off guard. But this one was well and truly hooked!
A few minutes later I had this fish of 89cm on the boat (don't have scales so not sure of weight, maybe 6kg?)
Bloody stoked! First big snapper for the new boat! So the moral of the story is persistence and patience pays off. I've been putting in the hours on the water, and have gotten pretty despondent at times, but just like anything in life, if you keep on trying you'll get there in the end.
As a side note, North Road boat ramp closes at 11pm which I wasn't aware of, so I got locked in. Had to walk home with the fish in a backpack with the tail hanging out the top. By this stage it was about 1.30am stopped at 7/11 and yeah I got some pretty weird looks. Lol.
Cheers,
Goat
