I got out with a mate on Monday arvo from Sorrento with a plan to catch some bait for a bash on the kings in The Rip the next day. First drift over the sea grass and my mate has caught 4 squid in his first 4 casts before I even had a clip tied to my leader. We ended up getting 20 in about 2 hours with about half of them being perfect small specimens of about 100mm hoods; perfect for bait. The other half where decent but not big, up to about 280mm hoods, good for cooking up at home if we don't use them as strip baits.
Next day we were up early and headed to the rip for an hour before slack water. We sounded around a bit and got some marks, put the baits down and were hitting hits but not hookups. Didn't feel like kingy hits either. Decided not to waste too much bait and put a jig down, up came a big salmon of about 600mm. Then we dragged a few xraps over the area and pulled up more big salmon. Ok, so the marks are salmon, not kings, bummer. The flow got up and we got hungry so we headed into some calmer water and through a couple of squid heads over the side to see if a gummy or even a lone snapper was about while we had lunch and little break. Reel starts screaming off and mate hooks into something going for big runs and we get excited but then the fight changed pace and it was playing like a ray. Got it up after about 10 mins and it was a just a big ray, damn it. Had a swim to cool off and decided to fish the next slack for kings again in the early arvo. A lot more boats out than the morning. Sounded around for a while for nothing, a few random drifts with squid and jigs for only a big wrasse and another big salmon. Then I see the birds working the surface over on the queenscliff side and head over for a look see. Big school of big salmon under the birds. Maybe something more king like under them? We couldn't get anything under them without being smashed by salmon, they would even hook up on our 200mm knife jigs on the drop. Bait didn't last 10 seconds. A little bit of fun but not what we were after. Hunted around again, did a few more drifts and caught nothing but more bastard salmon. Tide strengthened and we were stuffed and called it a day. Beaten again by the elusive kingfish.
Wednesday was a slow start after hitting the sherbets the night before but we decided to lower our expectations from kings to whiting so we could still go home with a tasty feed. Put in 5 hours around Rye and Pinnace channel on known good marks with squid/pippie cocktail in near perfect conditions. Mate caught 3 undersize pinkies and a toad. I didn't lose a bait all day! I chucked a few wobblers around in Pinnace and picked up 2 baracouta.
Returned home with some left over squid and a couple of the big salmon. Pretty poor results but a good time was had and the conditions were nice out there.
Last Mon,Tue,Wed chasing squid,kingfish,whiting.
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Re: Last Mon,Tue,Wed chasing squid,kingfish,whiting.
Nothing wrong with salmon and squid
Bigger about not getting your target fish
Bigger about not getting your target fish
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Re: Last Mon,Tue,Wed chasing squid,kingfish,whiting.
Great read....was there much boat traffic at The RIP?
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Re: Last Mon,Tue,Wed chasing squid,kingfish,whiting.
awsome work guys, atleast you got out there and had a crack, im still waiting for my chance to go. when you dont have a boat capable of doing it you got to be at the mercy of others
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- Bluefin
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Re: Last Mon,Tue,Wed chasing squid,kingfish,whiting.
Not really. AM there were maybe 4 boats plus a charter that was anchored just off the green zone on the ocean side of Fort Nepean (saw them catch a gurnard, don think they were after kings) PM there might have been 15 boats come and go over the slack water and maybe a constant 8 or so hanging around.Mattblack wrote:Great read....was there much boat traffic at The RIP?
I was told that over the weekend there were up to 60 boats in the rip but this is second hand info, someone on here was probably out and can verify.