Port Stephens firing is every Game Fishers dream and it fired last week-end. The weather, however, didn’t play ball. On the shelf where a lot of the action was taking place it was far less than comfortable.
On Saturday I took Daniel and a couple of his friends from Wollongong out. We didn’t bother taking Live bait with us choosing to catch it out on the shelf. It was a long and bouncy trip out because of the short steep Easterly swell.
There was no real problem catching the Slimy Mackerel needed. Once the schools were located it was more of a balancing act between standing up and holding the boat in position against the wind the current and the swell.
It didn’t take long for the action to begin and in short time we had an active Striped Marlin tearing up the ocean. The guys loved it especially when I was backing up into those swells and surfing down waves backwards, adrenalin inducing stuff. We eventually brought the Marlin to the boat and tagged it. Then I screwed up and ran over the dredge. It was too rough to go in and clear the prop so it was a long slow trip back home.
On Sunday Lindon and three of his mates joined us. The weather was a little kinder but only marginally. This day we had the advantage of knowing where the bait was. We soon caught the bait we needed. Soon we were skipping baits around the bait schools and dropping livies onto Marlin we had marked. This is an exciting way to fish, watching a Marlin come up and take a skipping bait is very visual, the best kind of fishing. All the boats out there caught a mixture of Striped and Black Marlin. Unfortunately there were a lot of sharks out there too, mostly Whalers but also Hammerheads.
We ended up the day with four Marlin tagged plus a Whaler which was hooked in the dorsal fin. A couple of the local boats did better than us but I think everyone caught something.
My only comment after the last few days up here is that Port Stephens is firing…
Tight lines,
Ivan
LINKS to…
Ripcharts
CSIRO
Bureau of Meteorology
N.S.W. Bluelink
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