Port fairy donuts

[ducky]

Figured I may as well put up a donut report.

With a bit of a decent weather window appearing this weekend combining with barrel reports and an empty ANZAC day on the calendar I made the call to head down to port fairy. Had a few people in them out again and ended up making it my first solo trip. I had a mate in another boat but we split up to try and find the fish.

Drove down yesterday afternoon. Arriving around 9pm. Got myself comfy in the car for a snooze before the 5:30am wakeup.

Woke up to a bit of breeze and a lot of fog. Got out before first light and started pushing down to where a mate pulled a barrel last week. Had some brief excitement that turned out to be a penguin on the barrel lure. Was about 15kms out and half way there when I got the call to come back in because fish were going.

So I pushed half way back in again only to find they had disappeared.

Pushed back out to around 55m and did a slow loop before cruising back in to the 40m line. Spotted a couple whales. A heap of krill and very little else. First time having the boat that far out. I'm interested if the 3 in 1 lowrance transducer can sound fish effectively in 50m of water. I'd expect it to but who knows. Certainly didn't mark much except the odd patches of bait.

Pulled the pin after doing about 70kms (I thought it was about 90kms) to keep some level of safety margin on the fuel. I'll be bloody interested to see fuel consumption once I fill up next weekend.

By the time Id called it the weather had turned absolutely pearler. So was able to run in pretty quickly. Gave a bloke a quick tow back to the ramp for good measure too.

[ducky]

[bowl]

Good onya for towing a guy back in.

[purple5ive]

Plenty of reports coming down from that way. Hopefully next time you have a bit more luck.
If you dont use the sidescan a lot then maybe consider a 1kw transducer as the FS is capable of running them.

[ducky]

Cheers bowl. Was only a short tow given they'd broken down in the river.

Yeah purp those 1kW are big chunky beasts and I barely use side scan but it's a lot of coin to justify for something I do very little of in the grand scheme of things.

[ben475]

nice setup in the back of the car there.

i got towed back to the ramp (about 100m) with my mate in his haines sig 520 by a 3m tinny at tooradin a couple of years ago after his motor blocked up with mud at low tide. that was pretty funny, the tinny only just got us back.