Fishing Time

I have taken the boat outside a few times now, the last trip was out really wide for a boat this size, to the continental shelf, Brown's Mountain and even a little further. Aim was to snag a Yellowfin tuna on hard bodied lures, we didn't get a tuna this time but we scored a nice winter mahi-mahi for the dinner table. The boat is going really well, still super impressed with the soft ride from a hull of this size; I could only just imagine how something in the 6m+ range in CNC Marine's design would perform. We headed back from outside, about 50km wide of Sydney's coast -line; this little boat passed a couple of larger and quite capable and popular boats along the way, punching through the chop at 4000rpm. Fuel consumption is very low, cruising, trolling and running around 3500-4000 rpm all day and the Suzuki DF90 will go through anywhere between 0.35-0.5l/klm of fuel so I have plenty of range to work with. Just had the motor serviced through my dealer, Northern Beaches Marine, the diagnostic software for the engine said I have done 37hrs in total and consumed 179.4 litres of fuel for the 37hrs. The day we headed out was forecast for light winds but the South-Westerly had different ideas....Backtracking…..Mixing it up with the big and even bigger boats all day, it was more of a trip to get to know the boat though, fuel range and performance. We headed out of Sydney harbour, over the 12 mile for a quick jig and then over the shelf to Browns and a little beyond Browns. There were two largish storm cells pretty much over Browns in the morning so we stayed a couple of klms away until the cells moved South. I feel for the boats stuck in that weather which I believe also had some hail in it and a fair bit of lightening as well, not to mention ‘black’ blankets of rain. VHF Channel 21 was pretty busy all day with the usual silliness and calls of yellowfin busting up at the back of Browns, South of Brown’s etc but no luck for us on the fin. This winter dollie was the biggest one for me so that means fresh fish all week. Probably our biggest mistake was to leave fish to find fish, where we hooked the mahi-mahi there was bait, striped tuna and a nice Yellowfin caught that day in the same area so it may have paid to stay in that area for a while, grass is always greener though and Yellowfin were caught in a few different spots that day.

I am a very happy chap! Mahi-mahi, dolphin fish, lampuki, dorado, this fish is known by many names!

Live bait tank installed and running

Sorting out a Scotty downrigger, this is the Strongarm model 1092