Jurien Bay Madness

We had been planning a shoot out in the boat for quite a while, but with work commitments and crappy weather the trip kept dodging us. Finally the boss gave me a day off, the weather was mint and the feeling of anticipation was high. With all this talk about the Spaniards lately and Jeff having never caught one, we made the call to shoot up to Jurien Bay early in the morning to troll for the day. With a bit of outside help and a lot of research we narrowed down our target area and packed the gear. The plan was to meet up at Jeff's house at 2:30am, which meant an early night the night before. Unfortunately, The Last Samurai was on TV and it didn't end up being an early night at all. Bloody good movie though.

We made it to the boat ramp by around 5:15 and the place was packed, but we eventually got to launch and away we went, dodging weed as we headed out. We kept all our bases covered with a Tyrnos 20, Charter special and big boy Tiagra 30W for if the billies came to play, as well as some light gear for fun with tuna. It wasn't long before birds doing anxious laps of the trolling grounds and not just a couple of birds, there were hundreds of them. The lures went out and Glenn opted for an Xrap Mag-20 in ever faithful green mack colour while I opted for white and Jeff decided to troll a garfish rigged with a keel. We did a few laps around various bait schools but nothing would even touch our lures, not even a tuna feather I had in the spread. After passing a bait school and starting to make another turn, a big splash erupted from behind the boat and Jeff's rod went berserk. After a short tussle and some close calls when the fish saw the boat, we landed Jeff's first ever spaniard and it was a beauty!

The action really hotted up after than with doubles and triple hookups happening out of a 3.8m Tinnie. It got pretty hectic at one stage with a three way hookup, a spinning boat, tangles, tripping over gear and a fish flopping on the deck but we managed to land all three, which meant bagging out before 8am.

We trolled around for a little longer before the action died down around 9am and we decided to go for a bottom bash to no avail. Pulled the pin and headed in, smiles all around and a hefty boat. I must add, the fisheries chick in jurien bay is a solid 9/10 and is definately in the wrong kind of profession.

Got some awkward stares at the filleting table.

Not bad out of a small boat! Thanks Jeff and Glenn for a wicked day out.