With all the reports of inshore pinkies being caught lately, it was time to start the 2016 “campaign”.  Past experience is that the fish start to come in close by March/April. 

The weather was really good on Saturday so why not give it a try?  Michael (zOOm) was keen to take his boat so a 5am departure from Hillarys was arranged.  The wind was light but the swell was at 2.5m, which means it is not wise to take on the crossing of the near shore reefs in the dark.  The “plan” was to stay in close, burley up and fish sunrise for the pinkies with good quality rigs and baits.  There was no spot, we just looked at likely reef structure, anchored and set up a burley trail.  Let’s just say we didn’t go more than a few kilometres.

A customer ordered 20kg of burley last week so I made a “special” batch.  Lots of fish, lots of oil and a high proportion of pilchard.  I must admit I had my first “2016 pinkie trip” in mind and It was a high strength fine grained burley that dispersed at about 1 to 1.5kg per hour, enhanced with pilchard shred every now and again.   

Within 20 minutes, Michael’s bottom rig went off.  This fish was a pinkie of about 450mm so back it went, but the signs were good.  About 10 minutes later my bait runner made that sound that you love to hear.  Wait, wait, wait and when the fish clearly had the bait set the hooks.  This was a nice solid fish that was peeling lots of line with the characteristic head shakes.  Very pleased to see the big pink flash as it came into sight.

I have imported the Big Angry Fish Release Clips and will have them available in a few weeks.  We got a small shipment to start with (which I have sent all round Australia) but kept one for me to test.  I also had some small vacuum sealed sand whiting so rig one up and out it goes on my spin outfit.  It didn’t take long for the line to pull from the clip with plenty more line being pulled from the open spool.  When I set the hooks, this was another nice fish but after its first run it turned and swam back towards the boat?  It did “wake up” and after a good fight was in the net too.

The fish were about 5.5kg and 75-80cm.  Not huge but still very solid.  Can’t complain about that bag within the first hour though.

After first light, and after the pinkies, we headed deeper.  Anchor and burley again and the results kept coming.  I got another good pinkie (released) and Michael got a nice baldie.

My bait runner went off again on another solid fish.  This was a good fight and then up popped a very solid baldie.  I had my bag so this was a lucky fish as we treated it with a lot of care, got a photo and released it with a weight.  It came up slow due to its fight and we are fairly positive that it released well.  We estimated it at about 5-6kg (very fat fish) so it was a lot of “quality” going back in the ocean.

We then decided that we didn’t want to risk harming any more fish so packed up and came in.  It was a lovely morning on the water with some quality fish, including a bag out on the target species just as the sun came up.