Respect Kingfish In Our Stomach

It's been too long since I've last FLOGGED (fish-blogging). No choice, my uncle and family came from Singapore for holiday here in Sydney. Anyway, did went brookering with Skipper Chen for our usual sydney harbour assault last weekend. Phil was supposed to join us but seemed like he is still not as fishnuts as us cos' he was busying playing chess with granpa zhou. Left HQ at an ungentlemanly hour of 3.30am to the boat ramp. Easy launch and startup and we were off with just approximately half a tank of juice. Got to squid grounds and started rigging up. It was outgoing tide and the current was strong. We then secretly anchor on the most shallow part although it was not allowed, guess we're no different from the whiskey oscar golfs! Heck care lah, since we're asian-finessers, we'll also anchor finesse style! Since current was too strong, I opted to use my yozuri paternosters. 1st cast and I already had a take, but no hookup. The current was damn strong, even Chen had difficulty getting his 1.8 down deep. Luckily I got an arrow pretty quick in that session and a first on the paternoster! Woohoo! Plenty of boats there were doing it hard, with many of them drifting non stop. Well, that was all we managed, with Chen loosing hookups and so that quite good size squid had to make do as the light was fast approaching.

Scoot off just before 6 to our previous kingies spot. As the tide was outgoing, we had to anchor on the other direction. Berley and berley 1st before we rig up. Did the same ol' and had one unweighted and one at the bottom. The bottom was quickly dessimated by the pickers that were probably attracted by the berley. The unweighted was luckily not molested probably because the bait couldn't get down deep enough due to the current. So did our cubing duties and was soon rewarded with breams and trevallies. Got a trev which didn't run like a trev, worse than the breams that morning! I even lost one around the motor, as their lips are notorious of being ripped out by their constant headshakes. Chen got a good run on his loose drag revros which turned out to be a bigger one compared to mine on his squid. Hooked up to a bream only to have it swallowed the hayabusa hook deep! In the process of retrieving the hook, the bream died, seeing it was legal size, we kept it. Maybe our anticipation was high to hook a king and that's why the multitudes of breams wasn't making us interested! But luckily, towards an almost very late timing to consider any possibilities of kings swimming around, the blackhole combo had a huge bend and the little daiwa samurai reel went zzzzzzzzzzzzz...

I remembered reeling in that unweighted piece to check and Chen had helped me bait up with a rather small strip that I thought was really small to entice! Well, we only had a squid and had to make sure that squid was enough for the session. Anyway, back to the fight...

The line was brought from the starboard side to port side, luckily I lowered the rod into the water and quickly swung it over the bow of brooker! Ok, this king cooperated and swam out instead of going to structures. But, it was on afterburners. The crappy samurai had really limited braid and it had many knots on it that I had joined up last time when respooling! The drag cap was crappy too, and I wasn't getting the right adjustment. At one point, I had to do some crazy stunts like using two fingers to add pressure on the cap, farkin funny man! Then the same ol' happened..

Ronald: "Bro, I think I'm gonna get spooled"
Chen: "U sure bro?!"
Ronald: "Yeah bro, see the backing?"
Chen: "Oh fuck"

But.. But... maybe this blackhole was blessed by GTK since he gave it to me, and just before the yellow colour line disappears from the spool, the king stopped. I wind like mad only for awhile before it started doing the zzzzz thing again, KNNBCCB! Ok, luckily it was not a long run probably telling me she's tired already. So, wind like mad again and this time better, could gain back more, at least to give me more confidence I'm pumping her up away from possible snags below. A few more bursts before we could see colour. King it was and Skipper Chen already standby with the net. It was an easy netting job and up came my 60cm king! Bloody hell! Only 60 and it made such a tough job for me! Oh well, at least now the score is Kingfish 6, Ronald 3. Arghhh!!!

So many thoughts ran through my mind while playing that fish, and I always felt I'll lose the fish! But the blackhole combo was really blessed. Too bad the majority of lost fish was to be on my ET combo, damn unlucky for kings! I can land bonitos to frigates on the ET but not for kings, DIEW! It was the time again for maccas brekkie and after staying there for another hour or so for not even breams, we gave up and headed back to HQ.

We saw Taylor in the kitchen and being a chef at the Sydney Wharf Restaurant, he helped us sashimi it on the spot! The king tasted even better after just being dead for only 4 hours, talked about freshness!! Brought back 2 trevs and a bream for not a really bad session.

Then during evening, Taylor cooked up the trevs and bream with his restaurant recipe which he says could easily cost $30 a plate! Woohoo! Shiok ah!

Had the best fish meal and looking forward to the continuing trend we've been facing for 2 consecutive weekends.

Ronald