November 2005

PO Box 63 KALBARRI WA 6536 PH/FAX (08) 9937 2043
http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

MURCHISON BOAT HIRE NOVEMBER 2005 ELETTER
Cray season has started and in the first couple of weeks lots of crays were caught. Things usually go quiet the third week as the crays shed their shells and hide under the reef until the shells harden up. It gets easy to catch them when their shells have hardened and they start their migration out to deeper water. A cray pot dumped on sand west of a reef usually attracts the crays as they move out from one reef to the next on their western migration. It is called the “run of the whites” as their shells are usually quite pale and soft.
These “Reds” are before they moult
Fishing becomes a lot easier now that the cray season has started as there is a lot of cray bait in water acting as burley bringing fish in from out deep, the dhuies and snapper come in for the easy pickings of soft shelled crays! Also the cray floats mark the reef easily identifying the better ground.

The river has been fishing very well with lots of soapy mulloway in the river. Most anglers have been picking up more that their bag limit from around the Castle Rock area. Having to let mulloway go is hard but lots of fun on light line and river prawns set for bream.
Average size mulloway in the river this time of year

The 5.3m boat steering was getting a bit tight so thought it best to bite the bullet and install hydraulic steering now before the start of the busy season. It’s no good waiting until it breaks during a hire! It would ruin your day; I would have to refund your hire and pay for a repair, probably loosing a few booked days as well. It cost me $1000.00, I hope you appreciate it.


Preparations are well under way for this our big annual fishing comp in early March next year. We will be expecting around 45 boats and 35 river anglers competing for $10.000.00 worth of prizes in 29 categories. Game fishing, bottom fishing and river fishing, there is a category for every one. Entry forms have been sent to nearly every tackle shop and fishing club in WA so get one there or email me and I will send you one if you want to be in it. (Both the 6.1 and 5.3m boats are already booked for that comp)

Christmas is just around the corner now and the boats are booking up fast for the holidays. The mackerel should start to show up around Christmas time and early January is when a lot get caught, followed very closely by the tuna schools. I can’t wait!

Mark Payne and mate Spot had a superb day out this month. I know Mark from a trip to the Abrolhos Islands a couple of years ago. Waiting a couple of days for the weather to improve, they picked the best day of the week and headed south to the Natural Bridge area. The 6.1m & 5.3m boats have 15 or so waypoints plotted on the GPS around this area. Picking spots at random they picked up a few blue-lined emperors before anchoring on a spot that went off, right on the predicted bite time for the day! First up they were into a frenzy of blue-lined and then the little snapper were being grabbed and then let go on the way up by something big! Mark baited up with a full sergeant baker head and sent it down. Seconds from hitting the bottom he was on to this 24kg estuary cod, while Spot was complaining about getting his fish eaten and then let go as well. He rigged up with a whole blue-lined emperor, but things went quiet. Patience paid off when the hit came later with this fine 7.5kg cod.

Mark struggles to hold up his biggest fish ever,

while Spot also holds his biggest to date

There must have been another big cod down there, as Spot will testify, because the one that was stealing Spot’s fish was a lot heavier he said.

A mate of mine in South Africa went on his annual fishing trip to Angola and promised some photos of the trip. When I emailed him to find out what happened he told me that he caught lots of good fish but got rolled in the surf loosing his camera so no pics!
He did manage to get a copy of a pic taken by another group with this big mulloway. They call them cob in South Africa; they sure grow big there!

Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local Competition November 19th

Only two boats in the under 7.5m section fished the comp. My 6.1m boat was booked and my 5.3m boat was in Geraldton having the hydraulic steering fitted and having a survey, so I was without a boat! Charlie Messina from Mullewa was up and being a member of the club asked me out. He has a big 7.2m Seaquest, so we went out wide to the 9 mile reefs. Charlie got this nice rankin cod and dhufish and a couple of red-throat emperor while I only got one dhufish some red-throats and a pink snapper. The other boat, “The Master Baiter” skippered by Paul Loffler with Mark Flanagan and Harry Rice fished south along the cliffs picking up some good fish. Mark’s bag of an 8.7kg dhuie and 4.3kg baldchin groper among his 7 fish was good enough to beat everyone.

Charlie Messina with his big rankin cod and dhuie.
Peter Dooley fished with Paul Maindok aboard Paul’s “Santa Barbara” in the over 7.5m section catching their bag limits of big pink snapper close inshore north of Bald Face.

Peter Dooley’s catch, 2 of his 4 snapper

Right at the end of the month there was a knock at the door. Three guys were at the door and they had a Perth based 5.7metre Hire Boat hitched up to their 4WD. Seems that they thought they would save a bit and hire a cheaper boat from Perth, tow it up here and fish. Well, the boat motor, a 2-stroke 115hp was over heating and they were having to stop every now and then and let it cool down before continuing, spoiling the day. There was nothing I could do to help and there is no one in town who services outboards. They found out when flushing the motor that it was all clogged up with sand and managed to clear it. A couple of days later at 5pm one of the guys knocks on the door, he had got this mobile phone call to say his two mates had run out of fuel, could I help! I radioed VMR and as there was no one else available got the authorisation to go and get them. It turned out that their radio in the boat did not work so had to communicate by mobile phone. I towed them in and they were grateful. The seriousness of the day was probably lost as if they had been out of mobile phone range (which is not very far) and their mate had been aboard and not at home suffering the effects of sea sickness, no one would have known they were out there and would have spent the night freezing their butts off praying that their anchor held.
In hindsight they agreed that had they hired my boat for 5 days (saving 2 days travel) combined with the 4-stroke economy and reliability of my Yamaha 115hp and 75 waypoints on my GPS they would have at least had a chance to get into some fish.
Safety is important - everything works on my boats!

A good weather map showing the surface pressure over 4 days can be found at http://www.travellingwa.com/ quite good to show what is really happening around Australia.

Remember if you rent our accommodation you get big discounts on our boats. Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings. We have bought a new fridge to keep your beer ice cold.
Comfort is important – our fridge is cold.

Check out http://www.oceanoutlook.com.au/ and go to the Geraldton weather for local weather conditions

5-day weather forecasts, or http://www.buoyweather.com/ and go to virtual buoys, is not a bad one!

Big bait – big fish, just ask Mark Payne, Spot, Gary O’Brien, Daniel Kwek, Barry Crouch, Jason De Rosario, Tony De Abreu, and James Scovell.

Laurie

If you want to receive a monthly newsletter by email just send me a BLANK email to lasue@wn.com.au with the subject line “add to newsletter group” and you will get it each month.