At least the fishing over the last three days at Port Stephens was  in good weather in fact compared to the last couple of weeks the last few days were perfect – unfortunately the fishing was not so good.

On Saturday I went out wide both because of the ideal conditions and the charts showing good water over the shelf. We passed through several shades of blue, green and brown on the way out but on the edge the temperature rose to 24.5 degrees and the colour changed to that deep blue that we love to see and there were flying fish everywhere, it looked perfect for a Blue Marlin bite –  there just had to be Marlin out here. I went South to double zero and edged out to the thousand fathom line and then up to ‘Almark’ where we had a strike from a Striped Marlin but no hook up.

I decided to go out wide again on Sunday because of the conditions I’d seen out there and the strike we had had at ‘Almark’ .

As we passed ‘Almark ‘ we had another strike from a Stripy and co-incidentally in almost the same spot as the previous one the day before.  I worked the area for a while but all to no avail. We then trolled out wider and up to the Seal Rocks canyons. Again the water was perfect with flying fish everywhere and birds constantly searching but no fish. Meanwhile on the radio I was hearing reports of a few fish being found down South off Lake Macquarie and that the water inshore had cleared up and a few Blacks had shown up.

So, there was only one thing to do on Monday – in close trolling live and skip baits on the inshore reefs. It was surprisingly difficult to catch the bait but we eventually caught what we needed. To cut a long story short we ended up losing two Blacks and catching several 6 to 8kg. Mackerel Tuna which were stealing our baits.

The first Black we hooked was bigger, around 85 to 90 kilo’s, than you would normally expect on these reefs and on fifteen kilo line gave Lee a good work out for nearly an hour before wearing through the leader. The second was only about 40 kilo’s and for some unknown reason the ‘fluro’ leader just broke.

So that was my last week-end at Port. I hope to bring Ambition back to Sydney this week-end depending on the weather which is not looking great at present but we’ve got to be back for the Peter Goadby Tournament at the Sydney Game Fishing Club on the 8th. and 9th. – see you there.

Tight Lines,
Ivan