![Image](http://i63.tinypic.com/2lw546f.jpg)
Made me feel a little bit sorry for the guys, quite an expensive lesson learnt for them.
The goal was to head way offshore and find some gummies. Having not a single piece of bait on board our first mission was to collect some!
Conditions were lovely early in the day
![Image](http://i64.tinypic.com/rku2qt.jpg)
We decided we would head to rabbit island to see if we could find some squid. It was the first time going there so didn't know what to expect really. On Google maps it looked like quite good squid grounds. Upon arrival we quickly realized it wasn't at all lol so moved on.
Next stop was Rag island where we thought we would troll some lures in the hope to get some flesh bait. Rag island is absolutely loaded with seals and while we got a few hits here and there the seals seemed more interested in us than the fish did, and probably scared everything away.
So a few hours had passed and it was now 11am and still didnt have any bait on board, which sometimes harder than finding the target fish. We made another short move again to a close island and trolled around it for a while. After about 30 mins of trolling we had 1 hit and a Snook popped up! It sparked a massive frenzy and the sounder was a light. We ended up casting metal slugs at them for 5 mins and managed to get 4 or 5 nice size models, perfect bait for Gummies and flathead.
So just after lunch where headed out to around 40m of water. Surprisingly there were quite a few boats and a charter out there, around 40km from the ramp and 30km from the entrance, obviously a pretty popular spot. We were using large snook chunks for the gummies on 8-9/0 circles on a paternosta and small slithers of fillets on 3/0 circles for the flathead. Didn't take long for the bites to come in with a constant flow of 40cm flathead ideal for the pan. Within 20 mins my cousins monster mesh coupled with a 12000 slammer was doing the signature gummy taps. Next minute it was buckled over and had some nice little runs. It managed to wrap itself up so felt a lot bigger than it was but still a decent gummy caught and release estimated to be around 4 foot and 6-7kg.
The next hour or so it was mayhem. We got clean bitten off by what we thought could be a schoolie, we hooked onto an albatross TWICE which pecked holes in my skis gunwhale foam
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif)
![Image](http://i66.tinypic.com/jaa0rr.jpg)
The day ended around 3pm when I had an absolute screaming run which i called early for a 25kg gummy. After a good 15 min fight on my 10k gosa and 30-50 terez up came a MASSIVE schoolie which bit me off ski side
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif)
![Image](http://i64.tinypic.com/euk8w7.jpg)
and with that disappointment we decided to call it a day. Still did well with 10 flathead up to 70cm and a nice gummy caught and release. Enough for a feed for the both of us. Still yet to land a big schoolie or bronzey which some here know are my personal goals. One day I will get them.
Anyway, it was a really fun day on the ski and was really useful for zipping from spot to spot. We did 88km all up which included transport and trolling and used half a tank (30 liters) not too bad I reckon. Could sit on a cruisey 45km/h in the offshore chop and could really open it up in the port sitting wheb on glass flat waters hitting close to 90km/h fully loaded in only a couple foot of water. I challenge any fishing boat out there to achieve them types of figures! (Subtle brag)