The Kalbarri Offshore Angling Club held a monthly fishing comp on the 28/5/16. The weather wasn’t looking that good but it was good enough to go out in. It was Dad, Laurie and I, Laurie owns the Murchison boat hire in Kalbarri, he has a range of boats that you can hire. So Dad and I met Laurie at the boat ramp ready to put the boat in and get out onto the water. After about a 45min steam we reached our destination that was about 18miles offshore and about 50meters deep. On the first drop there wasn’t much on offer other than a few little bites so we decided to move spots , as we started to wind up Lauri got smashed by something big, after a few laps around the 7.85meter walk around and a 10 minute fight, Laurie got the fish up and on the boat ,it was a good sized amber-jack that went around 10-15kg.

Once we moved to the new spot and dropped the anchor we were instantly getting good hits, straight away Laurie hooked up to something solid, after a short struggle he got it up, it was a good sized mulloway. We got that on the boat and in the ice box, and when I looked up I saw that Dad was hooked up to something solid as well, he landed another good sized mulloway for the boat.Being a competition, we decided to put down some line class gear to try and get a game mulloway, so Dad and I put down 4kg line and Laurie put down 6kg line. Again it didn’t take long to hook up; Laurie and I were both hooked up, it didn’t take Laurie too long to get another mulloway to the boat. But unfortunately my double bimini twist snapped, which wasn’t a good feeling but that happens when you fish with light line. Dad also got a mulloway on line class. As the day went on the fishing went quiet but we were still getting some reasonable bites so we persisted.Dad hooked up again and it didn’t take him long to get a good sized red emperor to the side of the boat. This was a real good catch. Soon after that Laurie hooked up again and it ended up being another good sized red emperor… things were starting to happen! And finally my rod went off and a real good  fish was putting up a good fight. To my surprise it was my biggest and first Rankin cod which I was pretty stoked with. Following that Dad landed  a solid pink snapper.

The fishing went even more quiet where we were only getting small fish when a bigger fish came though and smashed my bait but this fish didn’t fight very hard we I got it up it was a solid red throat emperor. After the bite was pretty much non-existent we had a long bumpy trip home. We came home with a good bag of 4 mulloway, 2 red emperors, 1 Rankin cod, and 1 red throat.

It was a really enjoyable day out.

 

Gear I used:

I used a shimano stradic FJ 4000 with 40lbs depth braid on a shimano bushy bait king 15-24kg rod.

And a shimano charter special 1000 with 4kg mono filament on a custom rod.