My First Australian Salmon.. FINALLY!

After scoring the hat-trick, I was itching to get out again. GTK's bro was in Sydney and so I gave a call to Jiaming and took him out on Brooker with me being the skipper for the day. Picked him up at 4am and we were off to Tunks. He had a crash course on launching and had to be the deckie for the day too. This time round, I made sure I launched on the center lane even though it was a bloody low tide. Well, there was no trailers around on a cold monday morning! Off we went to the squid grounds and crash course this squid virgin. But I must say, he had really inherited his brother's GONG TAO! The start was slow though and with the drift being a pain-in-the-ass, I anchored at the cuttle spot and Jiaming had just finished rigging with the jigs his brother passed to him. The outgoing current was strong and he had trouble getting those size 2 jigs down whilst I was also struggling with the paternosters. Then, suddenly he said he had a snag and I thought how the hell he could still wind it in if it was a snag?! Then, the 'blow-job' pulls started and it was his 1st arrow squid and a good size! Squid virgin no more! Then the rest is history, with him scoring 4 cuttles and missing a few, whilst I ate donuts! The time had come for us to hit the kingie spot and so off we went with 50% of the equation solved.

The incoming tide had started and the anchoring done in a good position. We quickly rigged up our usual setups before I prep the berley. At the same moment, staring at the constant pickers on my JW set at the bottom. Tough luck, today there was no customer on the JW, and our shared squid head scored nothing. Jiaming then proceeded getting onto his 1st ever bream on his newly acquired 4 piece Ofmer rod he got in Singapore, quite a nice piece! I also started rigging up the unweighted strip on the blackhole. By then, Jiaming had also scored his 1st silver trevally. An amazing thing then happened when we both placed our rod resting on the transom of brooker with unweighted strips. Both rods went off zzzzzzz.... at the same time and it was quite hardout! But by the time we could react, there were no hookups! I was very tempted to call for king runs and how awesome it'll be if it was on 2 rods! Who will net for who? Hahahaha... Jiaming seemed to do quite well, getting onto a few more breams and trevs. But this trip never went DRAMA-FREE! At one point, Jiaming was telling me why the anchor rope was floating on the surface, true enough, I pulled it in and the anchor with the chains were gone! The knot was still there but the shackle might have opened and free-up the rope! Fark, $40 gone! Might have been divers playing a prank on us, or the shackle had gave way? Luckily Jiaming told me we could tie the rope onto the structure and I positioned the boat 'swee-swee' for him to do it. At least that gave us additional fishing time when we were almost contemplating to leave early!

I re-rigged blackhole with a new strip and cast. Within a few moments, blackhole just went nuts! I called for king and fought it. The way the line moved was baffling. The fish went on surface and started going right to left. Then, at one point, it was determined to head for the structure. Both me and Jiaming knew this one was gonna be lost. I up-ed the drag more and skull drag the fucker away and she co-operated. Soon, while it was just a few meters away, she JUMPED! Damn, not a king, but a new specie for me which I've been hunting for a long long time!!! A 53cm Australian Salmon had finally gave me the right to take a photo with, SONG AH!!!

Sadly, no kings for us. Another bloody drama happened. When Jiaming was fighting a fish which was giving him more difficulty, his 4 piece Ofmer rod broke! And it broke at the thickest part! WTF??!! There goes his $50 rod and I told him this salmon had cost us $80 today! Funny Jiaming performed some stunts and continued fighting that fish without a rod. But this bugger was strong, it went underneath brooker and without a rod, Jiaming couldn't steer it away. The leader broke and he wasn't feeling that happy I can tell you that! I'm so curious what that fish was, DIEW!

Passed him the blackhole for him to continue his session and by then, we had caught a few trevallies. There were heaps of them but they just headshake all the way, don't know why they are so weak at this moment! Took a vid of GTK's bro battling his "BORING" trev, hahahaha..

Left around 10am and headed back on a very calm Sydney Harbour. Put the boat back in HQ and we proceeded to grab a feed at maccas. A very accomplished fisho this guy was, and he told me his career highlight was a 15kg Toman (snakehead) he caught at their backyard! Almost shit myself!

Ronald