Last week offsore suprise

Last week I attempted along with friends Dan and Brent to get off shore and make an attempt at some Kings, whats the suprise you ask, well for the first time ever in a trailer boat I got sea sick, not sure if it was the servo pie, chocky milk and red bull swirling around in my stomach or if the big stabi craft had me going green but I was not well all the same, we stuck at it for another 4 hours but struggled, we had one live bait smashed with no hookup, countless couta smashing the stick baits and 1 salmon on an X-Wrap 20 but no kings. The water like me was very green and the whole time on the troll the sounder was very quiet so it looks like we picked a crap day to be out amongst the swell, I have to admit every time I am out there trolling or jigging along the coastline I am reminded of how small I am on this big blue planet, every thing from the rolling swell of the ocean to the massive cliff faces that adorn the coast of Victoria but the scenery is magnificent. The pics dont accurately show the swell so here is a before and after shot of a rock that is about 6 meters high.

Realizing that things would not get better we head back into Western Port to have a quick cast at the squid, this time of the year is not known for its big squid so we were not too excited about finding big squid but were happy just to land a few with squid being my number one species to target. We headed for Tankerton hoping to get a few small ones for a feed but the next suprise to come were to find a few above average sized squid for both this time of the year and this location, I was using a new Gan Craft color that was a gift from Mr Nakahira and Mr Kake on their last visit, resembled a lot of the grass whiting that are caught in the area and seemed to be a good choice on the day, Dan was using a Gan Craft UO-Jya. On the way out in the morning we noticed a faint smoke smell and could not work out what it was, when we got back into Western Port we saw the reason for the smoke smell, French Island was ablaze, hope it was just DPI fuel reduction burning.

UO-JYA caught squid by Dan

The French Island Blaze

doing it hard in PPB a few weeks back.

I had the pleasure again a few weeks ago to fish with 2 of the nicest egi fisho's from Japan, Mr Nakahira (Chube) and Mr Kake (Kotaro) joined me for a pre fish for a couple of days prior to the Egi Grand Final. I have to say it was 2 of the toughest days I have had on the water, it did not help when I found out that they call Chube the wind God, it was blowing hard and made our drift fast thus making the fishing difficult and the teamp was about 35 degrees, I dont know how these guys lasted with all the gear on, I was sweltering in shorts and crocs. We covered a lot of water in 2 days for about 20 squid all up, I felt a bit better talking with some mates who said they could not find any at all in the same time frame. We battled the conditions all the same and had a ball doing so. Here is a few pics from the 2 days.

We also had a chance to play with some new light jigging gear that Gan Craft will be introducing to our market soon, PE1 and PE2 gear is a lot of fun and will suit our bays and outside in Vic waters perfectly and I look forward to seeing the gear here. Also had some fun catching flathead on the Big Spider Micro soon to be on aussie shelves.

After a days long fishing we managed to head to Gone Fishing Sales in Carrum Downs for another egi talk, another great night but this time we added a chef element to it, different thats for sure.

Jervis Bay

Image courtesy of Scott Thomas

A few weeks back I had the oppurtunity to head up to a place I have never before Gan Craft as they were in town doing some pictorial and film work with Fishing World Magazine, all started off well with the drive ufished, Jervis Bay in NSW was the destination. I drove up to meet with our friends Chube' and Kotaro from Gan Craft until a kamakaze Kangaroo jumped on to the road and made contact with the boat trailer near Broadford in Victoria, the roo managed to leave the left hand guard bent but no other damage, pulled into a road rest stop and managed to find some timber and used my jack to bend the guard back into shape. All good I kept on moving. I arrived in a nice small town Gerroa where I would be staying with our friends for a couple of days. I arrived to find both Kotaro and Chube' there but no sign of their fishing gear, was going to be a tough ask to catch a fish on film with no fishing gear, as luck would have it I had brought half my Garage up with me and included in the mess was a few Violence Jerks, this meant that the squid filming would go ahead. We had a fairly early night as the next morning saw an early start t a place called Hutchisons. In the dark of the orning we met with Jim Harnwell and his Camera man Scott Thomas who was kind enough to pop off a few shots of my boat floating something I dont have many of so massive thanks to Scott. Things started off a little slow but soon found the squid a long way from where we started off. We then got a call from the NSW sale rep Margret to let us know that they had arrived, Margret had picked up Yuki (osoi san) from the airport as he managed to miss his flight. It was good to see Yuki again, he always has a smile on his face. We headed back to pick them up and again headed back to where the squid were. Back in the same area Margret managed her first ever squid on one of the Gan Craft Australian Exclusive colors.
we spent a further 6 hours on the waters around Jervis and caught plenty of squid and salmon, although the kingfish were some what elusive, when we had arrived the reports from previous days had the Kings going crazy, however the should have been here yesterday phrase came up all too often., Not detered we kept at them and were beaten by them on the day.

The next day saw us again catching up with the fishing world team at the Shoalhaven River, this water way is known as a very versatile waterway with a good mix of fresh up high and salt down low with a brackish mix in the middle, the target was bass and again the should have been here yesterday phrase was baging between my ears again, we did manage one very small model that smashed a Gan Craft Big Spider Micro during lure testing, was a tough couple of days on the water but always great to fishi new water with ya mates.

Next couple of Days saw us head to Canberra, so far had done 1280km in 2 days looking at a few more to come.

Apologies

Massive sorry to every one that has been visiting this blog, I found out yesterday that my updates were not updating, for some reason the data was lost and I will update as soon as I can