Headed out for the monthly comp with Johno yesterday.  It was an interesting start given the Rotto swim was on and the ramp was quite busy.  One guy in a support boat decided that the best place to rig up was actually in the line-up to the ramps and probably had 50m of empty road in front of him, with the waiting boats starting to clog up the roundabout at Hepburn!  Nevertheless, patience is the key and it was a fairly uneventful launch albeit a bit slower than normal for 5.40am.

The plan was to visit a few inshore reefs first up to see if we could find some tailor.  We were hopeful as the start time coincided with around sunrise, the water still had the residual chop from the wind the night before, and was a little dirty.  We arrived at the first reef, and Johno noted that the water looked fishy whilst I noted that it looked a little treacherous with a relatively low tide, exposed reef, submerged bommies, craypot floats and ropes and the occasional bigger swell wave coming through.  This was not a place for larger boats or anchoring, but having a small boat we decided to get in and hold the relatively small position available with constant use of the engine.  The southerly around 10kn didn’t help our cause, but I have a bit of experience of “holding” with the boat and it seemed worth a crack, if only for a short time to see if they were there – it is always hit and miss with the inshore reefs as they all seem to hold the schooling tailor at some time but experience is that you have to be lucky to be there when they are.

We had some fresh scalies that I had got at market on Friday.  Johno had the relatively light 12lb gear and out when the fresh one on a 4/0 gang.  Well, it didn’t take long and it was smashed and a nice 2lb+ tailor came to the boat.  It was pretty entertaining seeing the fight as we were in nasty country with plenty of reef and tailor are such an angry hard fighting fish that will head for cover.  Johno, in his first 20+ years, never really liked fishing but now he does and it was good to see him tested in this way.

From there, it just kept getting better.  The school was in, they were feeding, the fish were good size and every bait was getting hammered pretty much as soon as it hit the water.  I had to catch my own fish, and Johno is not experienced enough to take the boat in those conditions, so it was a bit of a challenge to land my fish but no problem hooking them.  I got my 3 (2 over 50cm), and then Johno bagged out and we left them alone.  It was a fairly epic 45 minutes and a session we will both remember for quite a while.

We looked after our fish and they were placed in a salt ice slurry as soon as they were caught.  As I have noted before, I don’t really eat fish and tailor is certainly not on my list.  It was really pleasing that I managed to find “multiple homes” for the fish and they were all eaten fresh.  It was also good that WA Fisheries were at the club and they processed all of the tailor we had under the Send Us Your Skeletons program.  They even took the cheek flesh for genetic testing.  The biggest fish was 1.65kg, and they were all over 1kg.

We fished the rest of the comp for a fairly unimpressive return in increasingly windy conditions, but with the tailor session first up it didn’t really matter.  We are very lucky to have such a healthy fishery right on our doorstep.

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