July 2006

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

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE JULY 2006 ELETTER
The mackerel run continues to the end of July!
I managed to get out at the beginning of the school holidays and went out with my son Ben, back from Uni, and Gavin Penn, from the Kalbarri Palm Resort. As the weather was looking particularly good a couple of local guys hired the 5.3m boat and we went north together to have a crack at some mackerel. It turned out very well catching 7 mackerel between the two boats. We then went to a spot I suspected might have some dhuies on it as I had caught them there same time last year and was right! 3 dhuies from one spot together with a few snapper and odds and ends. Made for a great day out.

Paul in the 5.3m shows off one of the three mackerel they caught.

Gavin and Ben display the huge chunk of coral encrusted limestone that came up with the anchor. The anchor pull was so hard it took 2 of us in shifts with the help of the swell to get it up. Then we had to gaff and rope it off to get it up enough to get the anchor off. I was so exhausted I nearly threw up! Proof that we were on good ground!

One of the seven macs was a good one, 16kgs, equalling my personnel best.

Gavin holds his first mac and first dhufish ever caught. Last time he was out with me he caught his first ever yellow fin tuna!

My son’s girlfriend Rhea was up from Geraldton with parents, Mike and Siobhan. They have never been fishing before and done very little boating so when a whale-watching trip was organised I felt a bit apprehensive. It all went very well and luckily it was a very nice day but no whales showed themselves and a troll for mackerel failed to get a sniff so we went to a nearby spot that I knew produced a lot of fun-to-catch skippy. Well, on the bite time as predicted it was snapper after snapper (most undersize) and then the skippy came on so thick that every drop was hammered. It all went quiet and I realised that the wind had changed direction and we had swung slightly off the spot. It is that critical to be on the spot. We reset the anchor and it was mulloway one after the other! They all caught one and then started to release the rest! You made “Bite of the Month” Rhea!
Mike with his mulloway

& skippy.
Rhea got the biggest mulloway.
Rhea ‘s second mulloway and a skippy for Siobhan.
Siobhan’s mulloway.
This is the first time that we have caught mulloway from this spot and first time that I have caught mulloway from the boat other than in the river mouth. Hirers have quite frequently got them and I have wondered how, but it seems to be just luck and at the right spot at the right time.
Max, Rob Tenaglia and Frank Tenaglia. The bigger mac went 13kgs.
Now these are very happy guys. They took a 2-day hire and the fishing gods smiled on them. two great weather days combined with the fish going off resulted in them catching 6 nor’ west snapper, 12 pink snapper, a dhuie and a mackerel the first day and 4 mackerel, 2 tuna, 1 dhuie and 8 pinkies the second day! I doesn’t get much better than that! Where did they go? I don’t know either but it was up past Baldface somewhere!
Knowing that the snapper were going sick in the clear water north of Baldface I shot up the next day with my son Ben, mate Lou Parker and his mate Nathan Pearce from Kalamunda. Now Nathan gets seasick but he dosed himself up with dangerous amounts of Quell and luckily stayed right all day.Lou Parker’s mac and Ben Malton holds his yellow-fin and dhuie.
We trolled up 2 macs in short order followed by a couple of yellow-fin tuna and then went to have a go at the snapper. But as fishing goes, we could not get a bite; we weren’t even loosing our bait! We struggled on all day but luckily the weather held and just on the 4.00pm bite time it all happened.
Some of you might recognise the landmarks behind Nathan!
A couple of dhuies came aboard, then this good one for Nathan. Just as I was taking this photo of Nathan's dhuie my rod took a big bend, I reluctantly let Lou grab it while I put my camera away, and grabbed it back when he said he thought it was a dhuie! After a while it felt like a sambo, then a shark, then a dead weight as I found out when I reeled in the head of a big dhuie.
This big blue mako shark followed the dhuie head back in and we had a chance to take these photos and a video while it munched on the head beside the boat.
We recon that the dhuie must have been 10-15kgs! What a waste!

Rob Tenaglia phoned the next day, he wanted to do it all again! He had had so much fun catching all those snapper that he, Max, and Frank took the 5.3m boat out and shot up to his spots up north. Now they must have better spots than me because they bagged out (four each) on good-sized snapper again!

Have a look at these fish. This is only half of them!

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local comp 22nd July
Pretty average weather meant we didn’t go too far, and not many boats went out but still got into some nice fish.

My son Jared won the junior section with this little sambo,

while Di Stewart landed this beautiful 1.46kg bream in the river to win the river section. (The bream was kept alive then tagged and released, so it is still out there guys!)

I picked up the senior under 7.5m boat with a few skippy and a small sambo.

Dave Hugill won the senior over 7.5m section with this 3.3kg pink snapper.

Lou Parker and I went up the river last Wednesday, turned out to be a nice day with very little wind. There was an incoming tide up until lunchtime which gave us time to get up river, have a fish and get back down without too much trouble bumping rocks and shallow sand bars that plague the river at low tide. We fished the snaggy areas that we could find catching and releasing 6 bream and of course dropping a few!
As soon as the tide turned they shut down and we never got another bite despite being on a spot where we could see at least 6 just size and a couple of thumpers just holding out in the snags. We dropped our best-presented river prawn baits on their noses but they would not take!

Lou Parker with an average one

and one of mine that must have been close to a kilo.
You can see the snaggy country we are fishing in and we even had to park the boat and walk the bank to get to this spot.

7.5kg Niloticas Bream
Here is an interesting photo, sent to me by a mate in Zimbabwe. The fish is a species of Tilapia that is common in Africa and is now fish farmed in cages in Lake Kariba on the Zambezi River. The fish escape from the aquaculture cages and become feral in the lake. The world record for this fish is 6.5kgs. This one though 7.5kg was not recorded, but a big fish for a freshwater species.

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

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