REEF FISHING CHARTER

By 5:50am our group of ten CYC Fishing Association members and friends were on-board Fishstalker at Marina St Vincent listening to skipper, Scotty Weaver, going through our safety briefing. Weather wise it was a mild start to the day with good travelling conditions. I was particularly excited about our fishing plan as we were targeting the famous Carter Knoll at the far western end of Saunders Bank. It’s a long trip out and I have to confess that I have never had the nerve to take my own boat out to what can be very lumpy waters if the sea conditions aren’t ‘just right’. By around 9:30 Scotty was powering down as we approached his mark. It hardly seemed a couple of minutes had passed when the motor went quiet and we were ready to fish. Scotty had landed us right over a solid school of fish and we were instantly getting hooked up to some nice reds. We had Nannygai, Swallow Tail, Moonlighters and Sweep coming up. It was a case of if you didn’t like the size of the fish you caught you just put it back and try for a bigger one! In barely an hour our ‘deckie’, Mick, suggested we do a fish count which brought us to an end of fishing for Nannygai as we had reached our bag limit. The decision was then made to find another reef system that would hopefully have some different fish species for us to try our luck with. Our target was Fenris Bank which was on our track back to Wirrina. As we made way most of our fishing crew took the opportunity to have an early lunch in preparation for the next fishing session. As we approached Fenris it became obvious we were not going to be able to fish comfortably as the swell was standing up quite significantly so our skipper offered an alternative fishing activity. There had been good numbers of tuna still about not far off and while we billed the trip as a reef fishing trip, our crew agreed to try our luck with some Southern Blue Fin. We helped Mick set three trawling lines which were pretty quickly sent into action with a double hook-up. The most excitement was when our only lady crew member, Liz Sutherland, took her turn on a rod with what turned out

to be the largest fish for the day! After about ten minutes and a bit of help from the crew a 17-18kg tuna was brought on board with some big cheers. Scott kindly provided a trophy for the biggest fish of the day which we presented to Liz on arrival back at Wirrina. I would also like to say a special thanks to Ciaron Cowley who was our on-board photographer. It was a real buzz for everyone to see Ciaron’s drone in action on open waters and we ended up with some great photos which are featured with this article.

Peter Schembri FAC Chairperson Photos by Ciaron Cowley - Beard Vision

Liz bags the biggest fish award