OK...so left friday night at 6pm from Pakenham heading to portland, it was dark wet and cold.
ThomasG (a member on here) and his lovely wife Jan have accommodation in Portland, let me tell you, it was a great place to stay, these guys go above and beyond what you would expect, i was expecting to turn up to a wood panel shed with a long dirt driveway... i was wrong!
If i could describe it in anyway, it would be that its not just accommodation with very secure parking for the boat, it is more like a home that we were welcomed into....with its own toilet and shower, all bedding and linen supplied.. i could go on for ages about the service, we arrvived at 12am, the heater was on in both rooms, theres a huge enclosed outdoor kitchen type room with heaters and an outdoor smoking spot...
Saturday morning headed to the ramp at around 7-8am (after being made Coffee and home made toast )
got to the ramp and there was about 4 charter boats lauching, 2 were on the ramp when we got there, 2 behind us.. after the boat was put in, we followed the 20 odd boats heading out to the 60m line..
about 1 hour of being on the water we hooked the first tuna on my boat... :super:
was on a skirted lure that was in a bright style color..largest lure we had..
ended up with 3 more and released them, the next 2 we kept, was happy to come home with 3 fish, but the last one smashed the two hook lure so hard, we couldnt even see the 2nd hook, so we did the humane thing and put her on ice too...
we had a good spread of gear set out and it was the biggest reel, tiagra 80 that got used most...
to be honest a 12kg tuna on that setup was like getting a whiting on a snapper rod.. or they were just very lazy fish...
so i put on a lure on a 12kg rod with my penn eggbeater... now that was fishing, really worked it hard, Awsome fun,
so put it back out again for another one, this time as it got boat side, i was on the net and hit the 24kg mono line and broke the line, lost fish and lure..
at one stage 2 of the rigs got really badly knotted, think it was when we did a huge turn to come back the other way...so packed it up and headed in,
pub for dinner and drinks..
headed home 11am sunday..
Winter..Portland..5mt Seafarer..in tshirts.. what a day...
