Well decided to go out wide 2day & pull some lures for Marlins
Perfect day weather wise ran into rkessner think thats how it's spelt] from SF @ the heads stopped to have a quick chat & we were off, about a mile out the place was swarming with baitfish schools in patch's everywhere, so I slowed down & set out the lure pattern for the day.

Low on salted bait also ran 2 cord lines with xmas trees in hope of some stripies, reason I use cord lines is simple of we get a hookup I dont slow down boat speed just pull in the cord to land the fish.
This way you dont jepodize your chances if there's larger predators lurking about & we've even han Marlins chase a stripy to the boat on one occasion.

Didn't get a good look @ the baitfish but judging by the small splash's/pattern my guess would be Cowan's gave trolling around them around 1 hr & decided to pull in the lures & motor hard to the 12 mile the perfect conditions saw us hitting speeds of around 33 knots all the way out.

Arrived & out went the lures again worked the area around a hr or so found schools of sauries jumping out of the water moreso because of our wake but did spot another school in the distance not in our wake & something was chasing them trolled over to them but no hiikup.

Next we headed to Brown's worked a few loops of the area plenty on boats saw no one into any fish so started tracking Sth down to the Sth Canyons about 10 miles short we got a bit side tracked by the skies going dark & water sprouts forming so out came the new Megapoodle camera.



We were a fair distance away but headed towards them for a better look



They kept appearing & disappearing which made it very hard for us to hook the Marlins we could see them getting sucked up but couldn't get our lures up into the spouts to get a decent hookup

Oh well the spouts disappeared & we scrapped the Canyons trip noticed water temp was 1/2 degree cooler woder of the shelf so decicide to troll to the out FAD instead boys wanted to catch a nice big Bull Mahi.

So Jumpus came up with a brain explosion thought I'd try The Matador Technique so I got sausaga to stand @ the transom waving a pair of red flags, but the idiot used pink ones ! no wonder no Bull Mahi's came around they thought he was queer



I was having a snooze the boys had done a few loops with zero results so decided to pull lures in & float baits out to the Mahi's instead got a couple but very small compared to the ones we'd been getting @ the inner FAD past couple of weeks so out went the lures again & we tracked back Nth to the 12 mile.

Sauries were still there & in bigger no's than in the morning but still no strikes so we started trolling home via the Peak heard there were some striped tuna about on the 27 meg still no good so we tracked down to the inner FAD to have some fun on the Mahi's.

Stong current & wring breeze made it difficult to drift the RAD so called it a day but B4 getting a few runs & another mahi




Saved the best fish for last STEVE.P's PB on a Kung Fu Fush
It was a rip snorta should've seen stripping line off the reel @ a Smoking Pace think it was heading back to Nu Zealund.

Great day for someone who'se supposed to be WORKING.

Give me a break !

It's SUNDAY & I'm not a priest

A good looking day Jumpy, I checked the Manly Hydraulics site when you said you might be going and the swell heights were starting to drop off the scale with the duration on the way up.
You ever been up close and personal with a spout?

Yeah it was a perfect weather day Ed not very often you can put down the hammers & pull over 30 knots all the way out.

I'm gonna have to update my GPS marks me thinks

I dont do as much Gamefishing as what I used to & didn't have the marks for the Heatons Hill on board it's another 15 or so miles out past Brown's tlse I would've been working that area some mates of mone have been pulling good fish out there for paet month or so including a nice 90 kg + stripped marlin that his 10 year old son got a couple of weeks back.



Yeah only ever seen one once B4 many years ago had been fighting a Yellowfin out on the shelf for about 2 hrs & this spout started coming up from the Sth no more than a couple of miles away from us.

Not my boat but I was skipper has no choice & passed the rod over whilst I started/warmed up the motors, gave STEVE.P 5 minutes to get the fish in else I was going to cut the line we got the fish a good one @ that came in @ 97 kg & as buggeresd as I was slung the fish over the gunnel into the boat in one swoop all in one go with a bit off assistance then got the hell out of there.

Problem then was I didn't know which way was home as lighting started flashing & the compass was going skitso doing 360's so I unscrewsd it cut the wires to it's light & gave it to sausaga [boat owner] told him to go stand @ transom & give me a heading home.

Yesterday's sprouts broke the bordom there were quite a few of them forming then disappearing then reforming again something to break the boredom of looking @ flat sea's.

Hi Jgd,

Good read,I looked at the pic's fist and wondered what the pink rags were about very funny,nice spout photo,never seen one live myself, great sport fish the Mahi Mahi one of my favourites.

Regards
Fish.

Yeah fish I'm always looking for ways to have a Sh*tstir & we we're just talking about a noce Mahi around the 25 kg mark hooked earlier in the year put my nephew on the rod & it was a very nice 1st gamefish for him even stopped him from yolking over the side for the rest of the day

It was a noce big Bull & that's what gave me the idea for The Matador Technique sausaga was wondering WTF is he up to again think last time I played a trick on him was when I stuffed polchards into his shoes when he fell asleep he found out when he put them back on squish squish

Shame about the no show of Marlins was really looking forward to snappong some arial pics getting the hang of the camera now as well most of my earlier pics were way out of focus.

Got a few good ones of the sprout but posted that one cause it showed the 2nd sprout forming up if anyone's interested let me know & I'll upload them non reduced to a host site that I use there's also a nice one of Sydney taken from out wide late arvo

top read mate, but w t f with sig in the fish'es mouth

Well I did say



ps] that was STEVE.P being a silly bugger with his cigarette

good on ya jgd.. them water spots are awesome, I was sailing offshore bout 10 years back and we were actually caught in the middle of one (much smaller than yours) the yacht was thrown from side to side a few times and we came out the other side shaken and slightly drenched...