FISHING ASSOCIATION NEWS

Tuna Charter

The Fishing Association organised a Tuna Fishing Charter out of Wirrina for Saturday 20 February 2021. It was a cold morning for the middle of summer with 10 members and guests gathering at the Marina St Vincent and boarding Scott Weaver’s vessel, Fish Stalker. There was a small delay in departing as we waited for one of our team but he did not arrive in time and missed out on the fishing. The weather was a little blowy and the water choppy for the long motor to the eastern side of the Pages islands where Scotty said the tuna would be. Soon the birds identified where the fish were schooling and proved Scotty correct yet again. Present on the charter were Vlad and Daniel Humeniuk, Lindsay Barton, Kevin Keegan, Tom Ryan, David Sharp, Paul Bird, Chris Massey, Romeo Macolino and Phil Newton and it did not take long before the first of many tunas were in the boat with Daniel catching the first of the day and the first for him personally. While we achieved seven tuna ‘hook-ups’, we only managed to get three fish into the boat. Very importantly, Scott and his crew kept us safe and very comfortable in these treacherous waters and our thanks to him and Mick for a good day of fishing.

Vlad Humeniuk

Reef charter

On Saturday 17 April 2021 our group of 11 CYCSA Fishing Association members were on board Fishstalker at Marina St Vincent by 6:00am ready for our skipper to go through a safety briefing and familiarisation of our charter boat. It was a cold, dark start to what would turn out to be a relatively warm and pleasant day. As the local reef systems have been heavily fished in recent years we were heading out to some offshore locations to give us a good shot at some serious fishing. It was a long haul of about three hours to get to the reef system we were targeting. We headed out to Fenris Bank and motored another half hour past that just to the west of Saunders Bank. During that time everyone had a good chance to meet each other and talk about fishing interests and exploits. We had a wide variety of fishing experiences on board with a few people having not caught anything outside of the usual tommy ruff and whiting. They were in for a real surprise! Those of you who know me will recall my comments that fishing is about finding the fish and catching is just that, winding them in once you have found them. The two shouldn’t be confused as you sometimes spend all day fishing and don’t catch anything much at all. Then there are those days when you get it right and the fishing is rewarded with some serious catching and this day was just that. Having arrived at the target reef our skipper, Scotty, spent another ten minutes getting the boat positioned over some feature that was holding fish. Instantly we were getting bites but had difficulty hooking up the fish. In part it was that the circle hooks we were using took a little getting used to and then I would argue the fish just weren’t hitting the baits particularly hard. Half an hour of that and it was time to locate anther school of fish. Our second drop saw a bit more action with a number of Nannygai being landed but not what we were really out there for! It was now also lunch time so most of the crew broke out their sandwiches while Scotty moved us about a hundred metres and reset the anchor. Having eaten my lunch for morning tea I was quick into the water with my line and got hit hard immediately. By the time I wound in that fish I noticed everyone else was getting hooked up. The next forty minutes was full on mayhem with double headers of Nannygai ranging from pan sized up to three kilos. Both Mick, our deck hand, and Scotty were flat out helping everyone land fish and sorting out tangles as a result of rogue fish deciding they didn’t want to get caught without creating some trouble for us! It was great to see everyone with a smile on their face with rods bent as they fought with some nice size ‘reds’. While we didn’t see quite the range of reef species some of us were hoping for we certainly got a good work out on Nannygai. We did see a few Sargent Bakers which got thrown back and a few Sweep which were kept plus a good number of Swallow Tail which I quite like to eat to round out the catch. At about the forty minute mark I heard Scotty getting Mick to do a quick sort and count of the fish on board. While that was happening the fish kept on landing in the boat and the ice boxes started to look full. The count was quickly established and we had got to our bag limit already. As often happens the trip back didn’t seem to take as long as the run out. Perhaps the buzz of having a good catch on board and the incredible scenery as we cruised through Investigator Straight and rounded Cape Jarvis to run down the coast just a couple of hundred metres off the cliffs passing Starfish Point with the wind turbines in full swing - took our minds off the time. As we approached Wirrina we were greeted by a fantastic rainbow that went double for a short while. All in all, a fantastic day of fishing.

Peter Schembri