Went off the beach today for a bluewater fishing charter. I was hoping to go barra but couldn’t get onboard anywhere, it appears most people book them as part of a group, not individually.

The day was pretty good, I would have caught 20 keepers, most of which were sweetlip (tricky snapper).

My best fish was an 80cm queenie. Great fun to land. But a much smaller trevelly was nearly as good.

The highlight of the story was one of the blokes pulling up an albino shark. Or perhaps the antics of the young fella on board who absolutely wrote himself off – kept us laughing anyway.

Found a guy online (Shane) who had been having car trouble but was keen on getting his boat out. The tides weren’t great for shoal bay but we decided to give it a shot anyway and fish the low. However we got nothing! Nor did any of the other boats we spoke to. Its definitely easier to fish the high. We were in at 6am and back at 10am. Ah well, still a nice morning.

Mike, Kate and myself went down to Saltwater Arm today but it was neap tides with barely any movement. We were fairly certain that the lures would struggle – and we worked hard all day not to get anything. We were hopeful the Jewfish would come on, Kate got one around 30-40cm so that was nice. The boat near us were smashing the blue salmon. An easy day, a quiet day, and lesson learnt about the tides.

Went out in the Harbour today with my suzuki loving mate Mark. A lures only session from 10am to 4pm in east arm – I did not have much hope. However, we did okay. 4 barra (3 mine) with the largest being 47cm. Got a few catfish, a few small trevelly and Mark caught a thumping flathead.

Maggie and I took Pa to the farm today for his birthday. It was very easy to catch fish in the afternoon session, basically all the juvies around 40cm were going to smash each prawn. We all got one and moved onto trying to get bigger stuff. We didn’t succeed (a few did) and soon Maggie got over it and we went back to the juvie pond. She had an absolute ball, getting fish after fish. All in all she got 6 barra, and was getting really comfortable holding them up by the end of it.