hey FW, in follow up to my previous post for advice on my first charter fishing experience heres the report of how the day went.
first of all big thanks to the crew at Port Bouvard charters, they put alot of effort in to get us onto fish. the crew were a good bunch of blokes with alot of character, i enjoyed chatting and swapping stories with them and picked up some advice aswell. food and snacks were good and plenty of water/fizzy drinks. also even with a full boat fishing shoulder to shoulder it at no point felt overly cramped, idealy a few less would be great so everone could spread out more but it was definately no dealbreaker. next time might take the advice on bringing my own bait as it was squid only untill we caught some seargent baker but still alot of fish caught. i would definatly go out with them again thanks guys.

early start to the morning with bugger all sleep prior (too excited mabye) left at 5am for the 1 hr trip to pt bouvard, gear and eski all packed night before, hopes were high.

sunrise from the jetty and the boat.

ended up taking my baitrunner/terez combo with 30lb braid, 40lb leader and an extreme botton rig as my bait rod. due to some advice from FWA pro tackle and the weather looking to be really good with only 1m swell and bugger all wind all morning. i decided to take my FWA rod and new 3000stradic to fish some soft plastics, 20lb braid and fluro leader, 1 1/2oz jighead and some mcarthy plastics. full boat with 19 ppl fishing, only myself and another fishing braid so we were setup at the back of the boat.
because of the good weather skipper decided we would head wide straight away and work our way back. left around 645 and headed out, they threw out some skirts to troll for tuna as soon as we left the marina. was a long trip out, time in which i learnt i get seasickness, distracted myself chatting to the deckies and keeping an eye on the horizon. hr in first hookup on the troll, a young kid took the first one and reeled in a nice bluefin tuna, biggest one of the day about 750mm. 2nd came up about 15mins later landed by myself, not bad and my first fish on troll/first tuna. no real fight, we were trolling fast, over 15knots so possibly buggered by the time they caught the lure and we stoped the boat,  got setup etc. got another about 30mins later, after over 2 hrs travelling with a few tuna stops we made it to the first spot.
morning was slow with only the 3 tuna, some seargent baker (used for bait) and some undersized fish, a little frustrating admittantly. didnt spend long at each spot and i didnt even have a nibble for the first few, by 1130 only a breaksea cod and an ok snapper on the boat. each spot seemed to get a few more bites and by 12 it was starting to go well got my first hookup on baits, pulling up an undersized snapper at 450, spewin. few others had started catching aswell, had sweep, more baker, breaksea, a couple snapper and a sized dhu.
second hookup with a bit more fight, scored a nice breaksea at 480mm. not his lucky day, or week as he had a bit of a tussle with a shark or other toothy critter recently with scars and a wound to show for it.

bit more moving (usually oportunities i took to have a sneaky chunder over the back of the boat) and things start to heat up some more when someone lands a massive dhu, wieghed in at 18kgs, was a horse, only thing that wouldve made it better was if it was mine haha. sounds like it put on a bit of a fight and was called for a stingray at first as was moving around the bottom alot. guy next to me also caught a whiskery shark, approx 1300mm thing went spastic once it hit the deck before being subdued by the priest, deckies were really efficient head/fins off, guts out, flushed with the deckwash bagged and in the freezer. moved on again, woulda been nice to do another drift over that spot but no go. next spot i hooked up big, started to come up as a big wieght before it took off surging down and pulling drag. fought it up gradually between surges, before some colour appeared, hopes were up for a dhu but deckie called sambo and up it came. still another first for me, wieghed in just over 4kg and 750mm, after that fight i can see why others on here target the bigger ones! we moved on again, dropped drifted into the zone then bang, back on big time,  big hard surges of another sambo but alot more power/weight. ended up just holding the fish in place couldnt gain anything on him for a while between surges before he took off forwards along the boat, collected everyones lines with it... deckies and others were great, keen to see this fish landed, between myself and the deckies we were moving along the boat going up, over and around lines and rods. ended up in a big tangle up the front deckies tried to undo it but the line was hitting the boat at this stage and busted off, rig, leader and about 50meters+ of braid gone. it was about 2 by now so i didnt bother re rigging for another go as i had the plastics rod all ready. some tips from the deckies, a drop off the other side of the boat to check the drift and i was fairly confident i was getting into the right zone. 2 more drops, worked the plastic up and free spooled it back down, as i flipped the bail back over the rod loaded up, few pumps and dropped it. quickly free spooled it back down, flicked the bail back over and was on! good weight putting a nice bend in the rod, some head shakes, decky was calling snapper or dhu but after a short fight i landed my second blackarse on a 7inch bullhead minnow in pearl. also my first fish on a soft plastic! a good one at that, bit fatter that the first at 2kgs and 470mm. plastic was chewed up rerigged for another drop but the seasickness came in again and i was burlying up over the side while they were still asking me if i wanted to keep my fish or not. had my bag of demersals so opted to keep the blackarse and give the foxfish away. had a few a few more drops with some small bites but missed the hook before the skipper called it quits around 330.
part of me would have loved to keep going but i was done, sea sickness subsided for the trip home which was good, got back to the jetty at 530 and for everyone to collect there catch and award catch of the ay trophy that went ot the lucky bugger with the monster dhu.

the kill tank after docking.
was a great day out, would have loved to get into some dhus or even snapper but ive heard breaksea cod are great eating and i love a bit of sashimi so stoked with my tuna. ended up keeping the sambo as some said the small ones arent too bad, which i fileted up when i got home.did the sambo first and got alot of meat off it, tried a bit first fried up in the pan and was good, flakey, white and quite mild. next bit i overdid a little and it turned to mush, parasites i believe cause this? i tried another bit deep fried and made sure it was only just cooked to experiment. not mushy at all and tasted good but as i was breaking it apart found a not so small worm, pulled it out of the flesh and it was about 15cms long... i know this shouldnt affect the taste etc but i just dont think i can eat it after that, got a strong stomache but yeah...
 

was 560mm and 2.5kgs, lotta meat on these. peeled the skin off and cut into 4 loins, trimmed the dark red section off (bloodline?) and ended up with a fair bit of meat

the top fish looks like it lost some weight or was unable to grow due to healing the bit wound as its the longer fish but alot less girth.
got some thick fillets off the cod, nice easy fish to fillet, no pin bones, and each fillet is enough for me and my gf to share so theres a few meals there, cant wait
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fresh sashimi, was a bit nervous at first but was delicious! also have some soaking in vinegar in the fridge and froze the rest along with the fillets.

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