With the forecast looking good yesterday, Dean and I planned to continue hunting the ground in the 40’s we have had a bit of success on recently.  As seemed to be the case over the last week, the BoM didn’t quite get the wind forecast right so we delayed our trip to one in the afternoon rather than the morning.  The sambo rig destroying session of a couple of weeks ago meant we actually needed to spend the time preparing more, and re spooling, so the morning didn’t go to waste.

Hit the water just after lunch in excellent conditions and it was a rapid trip out to the “grounds”.  As before, we don’t fish the marks rather sound the general area and when you get good shows of fish on the sounder you lock over it with the Minn.  Let’s just say the first location was “alive” so anticipation was high.

The fish were biting and it didn’t take long to start getting them to the boat.  Nothing real big to start with but quite an array of different species, with the pinkies and Dhu all being undersized and released.  Then, Dean hooked up solid.

This was a strange fight and not characteristic of one we had observed in recent times.  We generally try and pick the fish type from the fight but Dean was having trouble with this one, both picking it and trying to get it to the boat on the relatively light gear.  His call was a large ray, but the lunging runs cast doubt on that theory.  When we finally saw colour, it was long and silver and when the “beast” of a mulla hit the surface it was lucky the gaff was nearby.  On it came and the celebrations of Dean’s first mulla capture began.  This was a nice fish of 15kg and 120cm.

After a few photos, the fish was dispatched to the new cooler bag with ice which was certainly a nice way to christen it.  Back down and within minutes Dean was on again.  He picked it this time and after another good fight another, smaller model, came to the boat.  I had heard a bit about “fabled” spots that hold big mulla in deep water and it was awesome to confirm they do exist.

We moved on with the fish still biting as with conditions like we had, it was about looking at the marks.  We landed quite a lot of fish over the day but it was the mullas that stole the show.  Perth Metro waters never fail to amaze me with the diversity and quality of fish you can get so close to home.