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2013 Snapper Comp Reports


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My Snapper comp was an eventful time, on day one my mate and i launched at about 7:30am and headed out to a drop in the middle of the gulf that had been given to me by a member of this forum. We got there and within about 2 hours i had caught 3 pannies. To get them we had to work through quite a few snapper in the 32-36cm range. After that the tide started to run quite hard and the anchor started to slip so we pulled it up and re-anchored. whilst we were doing this a boat full of victorians rocked up and started sounding around. they continued to sound around for almost an hour before anchoring up about 10m away from us. An entire :c ing gulf and he anchors up there!Anyway, we were just fishing and watching one of the dickheads on the boat next to us flick a squid jag in almost 90ft of water when my mate Will's rod buckled over (right in the middle of the tide). He was on it like a flash and after about a 10 minute fight i netted his Snapper (we had only bought the net the night before after much ummming and ahhhing) which when weighed in was 7.88kgWillCompSnapper7.88kg.jpgThis caught the attention of the vic's next door who promptly pulled anchor and went for about another half hour sound around. I swear, if they spent half as much time fishing as they did sounding they might of actually caught a fish! anyway, they anchored up again for a bit then left. idiots.We were then joined by some local guys who weren't in the comp, they were just out for a fish. they had not been there all that long when :sh just came out of nowhere and started circling our boatSnapperCompShark.jpgIt was pretty interested in the propeller so the guys in the other boat yelled to us to put the engine in gear to stop it spinning. This worked and the shark left the propeller alone and kept circling, getting tighter and tighter. i wasn't particularly happy about it but after half an hour it vanished as quickly as it appeared.After that we fished on for about another hour but once again we were having problems with the anchor pulling so with the weather worsening we decided to head in, swinging through mudbanks on the way. there was at least 20 boats anchored up there so we tried to anchor but the anchor wouldn't still didn't hold. By this stage it was about 7pm so we headed in. No point being out there if we cant hold anchor. So for the day we ended up with three pannies and Will's 7.88kgSnapperCompDay1.jpgWe cleaned them all up and went home, ready for a long Saturday

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Day 2 we were up at 3am so we could be on the spot fishing an for an hour r two before sunrise. there was some reasonable chop so we just cruised out there fairly slowly. it took us about an hour to get there through the chop. once we were there we dropped the anchor and waited for it to grab and see which way we swung. Well, this is where the dramas started. no matter what we did, the anchor just would not hold. it was a grapnel anchor with two of the prongs a bit bent but it just wouldnt hold. we tried at least 8 times t re-anchor, a couple of times we managed to hold but we always drifted within about 20 minutes. it was now about 7:30am and we were getting pretty annoyed by this stage about the whole anchor situation so we decided to drive over the the Pt Lowly rip for the tide change as we had heard that some big fish had been pulled from there the day before. with the waves still fairly large it took us about another hour to get to the rip where there would have to have been at least 30 boats already with more arriving for the 9:30am tide change. We suffered the same problem of drifting when we tried to anchor up in the rip. we only stopped moving when the tide went slack. i was getting a bit shitty about the whole anchor issue (the fact that it was raining didn't help) and placed a call to my girlfriends brother. he said he had a mate who wasnt using his bat and that we could borrow his anchor so we flexed it back to Whyalla to pick it up. the water had flattened off by this stage so it didn't take too long to get back and by 1030 we were back on the water heading back to our spot we were at earlier in the day.once we arrived out there we dropped the anchor and we were stoked to see that it held. we basically just fished through to about 5pm with 4 keepers coming aboard, my biggest being 51cm and i found out later when i weighed it in for the mystery prize that it weighed 1.6kg. the small snapper were like piranha's, stripping our baits before the bigger ones could find them. the only real excitement of the arvo was the arrival of the mexicans addicted to there sounder who, true to form spent 4/5ths of their time sounding around. they were out there with us for around 2 hours, must have just come out for the tide change. when we got back to the ramp we were gutting and gilling the fish and had an asian fella ask if we were selling our fish. i told him no because it was illegal but i wonder if anyone did sell there catch? anyway, on the subject of illegal things i know of one fisheries infringements, a guy got done fishing too close to the santos jetty, he was hit with a few thousand dollars of fines. he was only just inside the zone apparently.this was our catch for the 2nd daySnapperCompDay2.jpg

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Day three saw us a bit late out of bed, we ended up on the water at about midday and as we had used all our bait the day before and missed the tide change already we decided to just go squidding and then try for some whiting on the late change. we got about 15 squid before moving to try a small hole for whiting. we only got one undersized and a few tommies so we went back for some more squid. as soon as we arrived they were on, and big ones as well. we ended up bagging out pretty quick with 45. now today we gotta clean them all and the boat, its gunna take awhile but thats ok, it was a good weekend

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thats what its about wadey, hopefully some big snapper will replace all the undersized ones soon. Scaley Tom, yea i heard that alot of people were pushing the boundaries to the limit, i would have thought that the authorities would have been super hot on it but obviously they werent. maybe because a ship wasnt in? dunno. anyway, i have heard reports that it hasn't produced fish in the last couple of days, i wonder where they have gone? let the hunt commence :)

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