Portland Trip 06/01/17
Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2017 11:15 pm
Cracking trip to Portland on the weekend
Had heard of a few reports of tuna east of Portland so after a quick call around on Friday morning found a crew of 3 keen to make the trip up to the coast. Arrived to the boat ramp from Melbourne at around 11pm, after a quick check of all the gear had a few hours nap and was up and ready before sun up on Saturday morning. While launching the boat the skipper decided to catch his life jacket on the steering wheel resulting in a fully inflated life jacket, lucky we had a spare but we were off to a flyer.
launched in ideal conditions just before sun up and headed east, was treated to this on the way over!
Hit our troll line at around 6.30 am, could not see any bird action or surface action so decided to send out the skirts and have a troll around anyways. Found some bait on the sounder in around the 25m mark after an hour so continued to hunt around the area. Finally found some solid marks on the sounder but before i could say "we are picking up marks" a rod screams off. Quickly running to the back of the boat to clear the other rods, had one skirt almost out of the water when about 5 meters off the back of the boat the skirt i was clearing out of the way was hit right in front of us......... you beauty, double header.
after around 20 mins of ducking and weaving we managed to get both in the boat.
With a feed on board it was time to hook our mate up, he has been out fishing with us 3 times and had yet managed to catch a fish, so our new years resolution was to hook him up to a tuna for his first.
After sounding for another 5 mins we marked fish on the sounder and once again the reel screamed off, unfortunately after 5 mins the rig busted, i have never seen such a dissapointed fisherman in my life. Luckly after a few more mins trolling we managed to hook up and after a solid 30 min fight he had his first ever fish on the boat.
After the excitement we trolled around a bit more and managed to catch another 4 tuna, all around the same size, these were all released to fight another day.
Headed back to the ramp and were back on the road to melbourne by 12.
Cracking day and new years resolution ticked off early
Had heard of a few reports of tuna east of Portland so after a quick call around on Friday morning found a crew of 3 keen to make the trip up to the coast. Arrived to the boat ramp from Melbourne at around 11pm, after a quick check of all the gear had a few hours nap and was up and ready before sun up on Saturday morning. While launching the boat the skipper decided to catch his life jacket on the steering wheel resulting in a fully inflated life jacket, lucky we had a spare but we were off to a flyer.
launched in ideal conditions just before sun up and headed east, was treated to this on the way over!
after around 20 mins of ducking and weaving we managed to get both in the boat.
After sounding for another 5 mins we marked fish on the sounder and once again the reel screamed off, unfortunately after 5 mins the rig busted, i have never seen such a dissapointed fisherman in my life. Luckly after a few more mins trolling we managed to hook up and after a solid 30 min fight he had his first ever fish on the boat.
Headed back to the ramp and were back on the road to melbourne by 12.
Cracking day and new years resolution ticked off early