December 2006

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
MURCHISON BOAT HIRE CHRISTMAS 2006 ELETTER
A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone
The cray season opened on the 15th of November but I did not put my pots in until the Monday 4th December (After the full moon) with the first pull on the Wednesday. The run of the whites started early this year and we were into the crays straight away. 2 crays the first day and then, 8, 9, 15, 10,16,16,8,12,10,10,16,12,10,13,7,6. We have done better this year than last mainly as the season started earlier we had longer before the boats get booked solid for Christmas and I don’t have a boat to go out in. Our last pull was the Friday 22nd and the tally was 180 crays over the 17 days. That should be enough to see me well into the New Year.

Bruno and my son Jared pull the pots.

A pot comes up full of crays

At least 8 crays in this pot, they won’t be all legal size but with 4 pots we usually get a fair haul!

Some of the 12 crays we got that day, we were off to Red Bluff for a troll for a mackerel before returning to the boat ramp by 9am ready for work!

Amateur cray licences are available at any post office or on line at http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/. You may have 2 pots and catch 8 crays per day. We have two licences on my boat which is the max so we are permitted to pull 4 pots thus allowing us to catch 16 crays max. We share the crays, bait and fuel.
Some times the days are just too good to go back in so we have a short troll.

As far as I know this is the first game fish of the season out from Kalbarri. 11kgs of hard fighting yellow-fin tuna. I caught it on the Saturday 16th December. Quite unusual for a yellow-fin tuna this early but we did get hits on our lures (without hook-ups) on the Monday and Wednesday before.
The water has been over 22.5 degrees all month so it is not surprising that the mackerel and tuna are here already.

The next day was a good day as well and Stefan DeLucia was out with us helping his dad, Bruno, pull the pots and we went for another troll. Stefan’s best fish until now was a small tailor from Witacarra beach, but soon that all changed with this big hook-up.

Stefan’s first mackerel, an 8kg early season speedster that really gave him a work out!

Luckily I hooked up and got one as well!
Top lure colour for this year? So far when the macs have a choice the king brown coloured lures have been taken. Stefan’s incidentally was taken on a redhead. Halco laser pro 190DD’s are the way to go. You can buy them at the right price, from my Shed Shop when you hire my boats. I got loads of them!

We have accepted an offer on the house, the “Secret Waypoint” and it should settle next year. We are just about fully booked until settlement. But our other accommodation will come on line as from the 9th Feb and is better that “The Secret Waypoint”. The same deal will continue with discounts on boat hire when staying in any of our accommodation units.
Sold already! The new owners say they will be listing it with our accommodation agents so will still be available, but for how long and how much I cannot say.

I have been going out in my 5.3m boat a fair bit to pull the pots when the 6.1m has been booked and am very impressed with the performance of the new 100 4-stroke Yamaha that powers it. It fair jumps out of the water and on the plane quickly. It hits max speed at around 4500 revs so pushing it to 6000 revs makes little difference, thus cruising at 4500 is a real fuel saver. When I collected my pots on the 22nd we had 3 adults and 2 kids aboard plus 4 cray pots and it still jumped up on the plane on the way home. I know that the 6.1m boat would have struggled a bit with that load, as it only has a 115hp 4-stroke Yamaha but the comfort of a big boat is what counts!

Here are a couple of pics of a very lucky Rob Jacobs and mate Ian Brunette. I say lucky because Rob phoned up earlier in the year to book a boat and had a lot of trouble getting accommodation during this very busy time. We hunted around for him eventually coming up with some at the Palm Resort. He then phoned up and cancelled the boat saying that he had bought his own boat! Thanks Rob! Unfortunately when he went to get the trailer registered there was a mix up with the VIN number and ended up having to leave the boat back in Perth. He then came round to me on the 23rd Dec. grovelling for a boat! I say lucky, as the only boat available was the 5.3m on Christmas day. Lucky they also had brownie points stored up and the wives let them go fishing! Lucky they hit the mackerel out from the ever-faithful Sand Patch.

Ian with his Sand Patch caught mac.

Rob with his. Note the Sand Patch in the background. Rob also released a shark mackerel.

Ian got 2 fish as well

A how to catch mackerel and tuna by pictures.

Pick a nice day and get up early, be on the water by first light
Select the right lure and colour. This year the colour is king brown. Halco Laser Pro 190DD is my choice of lure type.
Troll where the fish are, around the cray pots 22m deep from 1km north of the Murchison River Mouth to a couple of kms past the Sand Patch. There is another patch from Red Bluff to Pot Alley.

Drag the lures around at about 4-6knots, (fast walking pace). Wait patiently for a strike. It helps to drag teasers behind in the prop wash as well.

Find the bait schools and working birds and troll around them, not too close as you will scare them away. A tuna or mac will find your lure sooner or later.

When the strike comes, stop the boat, bring in all other lines and teasers and take control of the fish, no need to have a tight drag! Jared is fishing 6kg line.
Be patient, this took 1 hour on the morning of the 28th Dec, before we saw the fish. It was a yellow-fin tuna about 15-20kgs.
Have the best tackle you can afford. We fish Shimano TLD15’s and
Shimano Charter Special 2000’s for 6kg line class. 1000’s for 3kg line. We change the drag washers to carbon fibre washers and get the reel serviced from new and remove the level wind.
Unfortunately the fish bust off after an hour, close to the boat, almost within a gaff shot! I nearly cried, Jared did not feel too good either!

The Kalbarri Sports Fishing Classic preparations are well advanced and ready for another successful event on the 2nd 3rd and 4th March next year. I have had a cancellation for the 5.3m boat as well as the house so both are available that weekend. It is the Labour Day long weekend and in the middle of the best fishing months here in Kalbarri. The Classic will be on so it will be very busy and if you are thinking of fishing a tournament this would be a great start. You can download an entry form from the Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club website. Just go to the Kalbarri Classic Sports Fishing page.

Last month I reported on the sinking of the iconic Kalbarri River Queen. Well it's back up and floating again and all fixed up. The skipper is keeping quiet about it but it seems that when he had it out of the water, he replaced the Hamilton Jets Screws and inadvertantly replaced the seals the wrong way round so it was letting water in and not letting it out!

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local comp.

No comp this month, just too busy for everyone!


The caravan park at Port Gregory is under new management and a booking agent for my boats. You can now book a boat and pick it up in Port Gregory.

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.

5-day weather forecasts, http://www.buoyweather.com/ go to virtual buoys, pick the location you want. This is the one I go by!

Big bait – big fish
Laurie

If you want to be included in these newsletters just send me a return BLANK email with the subject line “subscribe” and you will receive one each month.

November 2006

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

This month is the start of the improving weather, the swell drops, the water warms up and the mornings are usually calm so we have more chance to get out and play. We still get a lot of wind at this time of year but that usually kicks in around lunch. With the low swells the abalone picking gets easier and I have been out with some mates getting a feed.
Picking a low swell and a low tide at the same time is the secret. Roe’s Abalone the kind we get up here can be found in abundance but you need to get out of the easier reached places like north of the river mouth. Rock pools like above hide over size abs.
They are there for the picking, lined up like on a supermarket shelf along the ledges and cracks in the reef.
Some are easy to find but others are hidden away under ledges and are inaccessible. If you turn them upside down they will just about climb out of their shells feeling for something to help them turn over with. Makes them easy to shuck when they do this. There is a fair bit of preparation but real tasty when measured, collected, shucked, cleaned, beaten and pan-fried.

Exmouth Billfish Bonanza
Our trip to Exmouth was disappointing to say the least. A very long drive up, 10 and a half hours from Kalbarri towing my 6.1m boat. We crossed the 26th parallel and the Tropic of Capricorn. Seems to be a big thing as lots of tourists stop and take a picture of the tropic line!

I snapped this pic of the tourists as we went by

We past the multitudes of termite mounds
The whole aim of going to Exmouth was to enter the Betta Electrical Billfish Tournament and catch a sailfish. We have never caught one before and the guys up there showed us where to go, how to do it and generally offered as much info as asked for.

We were given tags, which looked quite big and difficult to stick into a billfish

so we tried sticking one in a rock melon to try to see what it felt like. The tags went in OK.

We stayed at the Pot Shot Resort, $123.00 a night, about as reasonable as you can get in Exmouth and they have emus walking about the grounds and also all over Exmouth town site.

The way we were told and saw other boats doing the same is to head out into the Gulf about 25k north east of the Exmouth Marina to near the “Macky Lumps” or Exmouth Reef and troll around dragging teasers behind the boat. When a sailfish comes up to have a look at the teasers, you free spool a gardie rigged on a circle hook to it. Sometimes they are a little fussy and will only take a live bait,

so we jigged up some baits beforehand and had them rigged ready to go. Well we never got to raise a sailfish so never fed back a bait over the two days! Of the 17 boats in the comp only 7 boats caught fish so I don’t feel too bad but I sure am disappointed. We saw sailfish being caught by other boats so we were in the right area, doing the right thing, just unlucky I guess. So a bit of soul searching, teaser modification and enthusiasm needed next time. I have a waypoint for the sailfish grounds, Dayne, and for anyone else who hires one of my boats and is taking it up there.

The afternoons glassed off. This is us powering back at 45km/h at 5.30pm from the centre of the Gulf. No swell, no wind, no sailfish!
For the record we travelled 265km over the two days and used up 1 litre of fuel per 1.6km travelled.

The cray season has started but I have not had a chance to get my pots in yet and will now wait until the “whites”. That is, after they have shed their shells and hardened up and start to move out to deeper water. It is easy to catch them then. They tend to stay under cover, not moving around or feeding while their shells are soft, so will not move into your pots, hence it is hardly worth having your pots out. It is however when the fishing greatly improves as the snapper and dhuie all move inshore to suck the jelly crays out of their holes. They should start after the full moon so I will be putting my pots in around 5th December.

New Accommodation
As per last newsletter the new accommodation comes on line from the first week in February. It is the “Deluxe Duplex” and both units on the block have an enclosed courtyard at the back with a BBQ. Only one street back from the foreshore right behind the IGA.
Both duplexes have an enclosed back courtyard, carport, aircon, washer, microwave, TV etc, are fully self-contained and each sleeps 6.
Rates have not been finalised yet but will remain much the same as they were and we will still offer the same discounts with the boats for these units as usual. They each sleep 6 but being a duplex can take larger groups, as they are right together. I will be posting it all up on my website soon on the accommodation page .We will repaint inside and out and fix it up a bit and make it more comfortable.


Sad News
This morning, Saturday 2nd December, we awoke to find the “Icon” of Kalbarri, The River Queen sunk to the bottom of the river with just the bow above water! A real tragedy for Tim & Julia Woodcock, the operators of the River Queen that have been plying the river for the past 20 or so years.

With the help of the Shire loaders, grader, and a thick rope that broke a few times, they pulled the boat to the edge of the beach where it stuck fast as by this time the bow had filled with water and it settled on the bottom.

They managed to get it out of the water and onto the davit but we don’t know what the problem was as yet!


Boat Hire Price Rise
The price rise has come and gone and my new brochures are out and about with the new prices on them. The price rise was not very much so it is not going to hurt too bad but on the up side, all my boats now have 4-stroke Yamahas saving you a fair packet on your fuel bill. The new prices are on my website at www.murchisonboathire.com.au/hire_rates2.htm

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local comp 18th November.
I was away in Exmouth for this comp, but some good fish were caught as usual.

Lui with his shark and baldchin,

fine mulloway from the beach and Di with a river caught estuary cod.
We also had our once a year away day at Wagoe last week. We stayed in the chalets and fished the Friday night and Saturday and had the weigh-in and party on the Saturday night.
This 22.8kg mulloway was caught by Karen Palamara on the Sat evening, as were other fish.


The caravan park at Port Gregory is under new management and a booking agent for my boats. You can now book a boat and pick it up in Port Gregory.


Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.


5-day weather forecasts, http://www.buoyweather.com/ go to virtual buoys, pick the location you want. This is the one I go by!


Big bait – big fish
Laurie

If you want to be included in these newsletters just send me a BLANK email to lasue@wn.com.au with the subject line “subscribe” and you will recieve one each month.