Up early again on the last day and it was once again pretty cold on the water. Once again there was a line up at the boat ramp. I went down to see if anyone needed help in an effort to get us going a bit faster. The answer was that everyone did. Quite amazing how many people were putting their boats in danger, but anyway. We soon got underway and went back to the gummy shark place. There wasn’t anything for a while until BANG I locked up on something large. Unfortunately it stuck itself to the bottom and refused to budge, as I slowly dragged it up, I was pretty sure it was a skate. Well, I will take a bit of bit of action and a free knot/drag test, so I got it to the surface and got my gear back, before sending it on its way.

The amusing story for this was that I managed to get a small live baitfish for bait. Dad managed to get a live crab. We put both down there to see who could attract the gummy. After a while I couldn’t feel my fish moving, so I wound up to see what had happened and the crab was eating him! Aside from getting a massive tangle, he had taken my baitfish’s head clean off.

After that we went to the flathead spot. All of a sudden I was on fire. I pulled up about 5-6 flathead in a row, Dad didn’t manage any and the skipper had one or two. I used Dad’s old joke against him, asking if he needed me to show him how to hold his rod. Soon we went back to the mark and things got a bit quiet. It seemed it was quite difficult to figure out how to drift. The next move yielded great results, we were taking them up very regularly. I got my first double header, unfortunately the second flathead managed to wrap his tail around the braid so badly I gave up on getting it apart, and had to retie up during a gold 5 minutes of fishing.

Notice the braid wrapped around his tail, very annoying

We only had a few hours to fish, as we were out by 1pm so we could get on the road back home. I did manage to get a Red Butterfly Gurnard fish, who wrapped himself around Dad’s gear. I was a bit disappointing when I got him to the surface, as I thought he was going to be a monster, but actually I was dragging an extra sinker as well.

Caught:

A bit hard to say. I think I likely got around 15 flathead and the gurnard. The skipper got one gurnard too, probably 10 flathead. He got a few thumpers, I didn’t manage to get a real “photo flathead”. Dad got a bit less than him I think. All in all it was similiar fish than the day before, but it much less time. Minus the Gummy of course.

And that was it from Cape Conran, but I certainly would be keen to go back! Great fun.