Deep Sea outing report Sunday 31st August.
Report by Michael Markich
With the forecast of big swells i changed the boundaries for the deep sea day to the lower regions of the Hawkesbury River to allow more members to fish. The large swell wasn't as bad as they said it would be as it was only rough until about 10am and almost glassed out close to shore after 12pm as there was a westerly wind.
Even though it was nice to be on the water and plenty of fish on the sounder, the fishing wasn't the best with lots of time between bites. Andreas Peukert had 4 on board taking Ron Abdilla, Cristy Dickson and Alison Dring out fishing with him. A Rumour getting around said that when the sea was rough in the morning there was plenty of burley being put in the water but still the fishing was a bit slow. Ron Abdilla got 2 keeper snapper between 30 -40cm and a nice gummy shark which added a bit of excitement to the day. The rest of the crew got a mixed bag of undersized or undesirable reef species. In my boat myself and my son Cameron Markich did pretty much the same with 1 x 395mm Snapper and a large Banjo shark and the odd reef species as well.
I also had my main auto bilge pump fail ending up with a few hundred litres of water under the floor. Thankfully my secondary pump worked so im replacing both pumps in the next few weeks. Tony Pearce fished inside the river around flint and steel and Cowan landing a legal bream and Shovel nosed shark as well. Due to the small number of participants for the day i didn't end up cooking the usual BBQ but it still ended up being a great day out.
