Journeyed down to portland again on the weekend to have another crack on the barrels which apparently everyone is catching if you go by portland reports.
Made the trip up on friday night along with the majority of Melbourne, ended up staying at the hotel de carpark along with another 20 or so boats. Due to the weather we decided to head out really early so the boat was in the water and made our way around the coast to Bridgewater bay.
As soon as the sun popped up the trawling commenced by 9 oclock around 80 boats had the same idea as well all trawling the same small area.
A pack of birds started busting up and every boat within a km converged on the pack, 3 boats drove straight through and the school went down.
https://vimeo.com/177875857
https://vimeo.com/177875855
Sorry for the quality, hard to hold a camera still when on a boat
Most people gave each other room, there were a few **** heads around who had no issues cutting you off or cutting across lines, saw one boat almost lose a rod because some one cut too close across hes line and got hooked on the boat.
By 10am there were boats birds and seals everywhere but no fish caught.
https://vimeo.com/177875824
https://vimeo.com/177875788
sounded up some big marks but with all the noise on the surface all the marks were down very low. Pulled the pin by 3 and came back to Melbourne barrel-less once again.
Will not be fishing portland again on a weekend with nice weather, have done it a few times this season and have found the more boats and noise on the water the less fish get caught for the day, think i will stick with mid week fishing instead.
Heres a few bonus pics!!
- Dont need a big boat on a nice day, this was 20 kms wide off portland
