Back blogging after the Christmas break

Taken a bit of time off to spend some time with friends and family over the Christmas break, was good to step away from the computer for a bit.

Dan with his deep fish on a UO-JYA

Did a couple of trips while I was off playing in the deeper water, with a mate Dan. We managed to find a couple of nice squid in those trips even though the calamari season normally slows at this time of the year with only smaller squid being caught.  We worked the deeper drops of Western Port from 8 to 22 meters looking for some squid that have been attacking baits of fishermen chasing Snapper and Gummy Sharks, many of the baits that have been presented for fish were coming back with the tell tale sight of the triangle bite in the back of the head so we put some egi in front of them to see what would happen and what do you know we found some squid and some good size for what we expect in February. Dan then took his son out to teach him the same as he has been learning and young Izzak landed his first squid egi style from a similar location, from what Dad (Dan) tells us he had only just cast his line out and before he could tie himself up he had this first coming back to the boat, great work from the young fella.

Young Izzak also on UO-JYA

With the change in many of the things we used to believe about the squid spawn and habits I have just written a letter of support to for Dr Corey Green at DPI to get some funding so we can start to get some serious answers about squid spawn, squid numbers and habitat. We hope that this research will get us on the way to understanding a bit more about the slimey little cephlapods and help us manage the fishery a little better if needed. At present we have zero scientific data for Southern Calamari in Australia, no one has ever conducted a census and no one has ever measured spawn cycle's. At first after reading the application I was a little concerned, in recent times fishermen in this country have been the subject to many species bans, closed seasons and unjustified closed areas for fishing, however, we have no data full stop on this species I decided that we as anglers have a responsibility to the species to ensure its future and we can not do this until we establish numbers, habitat and population doubling times.

Another deep squid on a UO-JYA

I thought I might throw this pic in while i was posting, on my return from a trip to Flinders a few days ago I came accross a massive boil in the water, the pic only shows a small area but note I was in the middle of the boil, fish were breaching for about an acre of water, at first I assumed they were just Salmon busting but with the water so clear I could see fish clearly, Salmon were in the school along with Couta, Pike and Slimeys all chasing Garfish. This means that there is lots of stuff chasing these fish into the bay, looking forward to the next few weeks when the Striped Tuna, Mako Sharks and Kings fire up just outside our great bays and harbors, no if only this wind would bugger off and let us all out to enjoy it.

Click on photo for better view