19.03.11 Hunting and Fishing comp

Sunrise 20.03.11 The day only got better Murray's Snapper 12.36kg - 90cm long Too big for the bin (75 ltr)(almost with a bend )

With the way the weekends have been lately (in fact nearly all summer) I decided to take the day off work on Friday as the weather and sea conditions looked great. Managed to find a crew in Gnome and the two of us went out for a Skippy hunt, we didn't need to go far, 1km from the harbour entrance we saw a large flock of birds feeding and sitting on the water (a sure sign of Skippie's under them). Out went the lures and an hour later we had 20 Skippie's in the chilly bin and in the fish storage tank under the floor and back home before 11am to spend the rest of the day filleting the sides and berleying the bodies. 19.03.11 Day one of the Hunting and Fishing contest. Friday was a brilliant day fine, calm and hot. That night while being thrashed at darts by our neighbours it started to rain, but the morning the sky was cloudy and calm and the weather only got better. We headed to our snapper spot up the coast to FR1A, a good 30Km run. We set the berley bag and sent out the strayline's and waited, I managed one 1.5kg snapper and the wait continued, there was a large splash and our berley bag and 10 litres of berley disappeared into the jaws of a large Mako shark 100kg's or more. Out went another berley bag and the wait continued again punctuated by a 8kg Kingfish to Murray and another small snapper each. By lunch time we decided to move to the shore and try close in and that plan didn't work that well either so we then went to under the cliffs but the back wash was ugly and we saw a lot of birds working not far away, so we hightailed to them and managed to put another 12 Skippie's in the bin for bait. We then went back the our original area and tried another spot with the same results except this time we managed to save the berley from the large Mako that turned up again. 20.03.11 Day two. We headed out to the Aerial Reef to the shallows, the morning was perfect no wind , no swell, warm and sunny. The berley started to work and we managed a couple of snapper at 1.9Kgs and a kingfish 13.3Kg. By lunch time the moaning from Murray about straylining being boring was starting to get to me so we headed out to South rocks to try our luck there, all we managed was another 6 Skippie's for the bait bin. So back to Aerial and to my AR8A spot. In went the berley again and a couple more small snapper later Murray's reel screamed he grabbed it and managed to play in a large snapper that weighted in at 12.360kg, a beautiful fish that took out the competition. So much for being bored, Murray caught a fish of a life time - the world record for snapper is just over 17kg. Footnote - Monday and the rain has set in, so for once we have had a perfect weekend.