Jervis Bay May 2008

G’day lads

ten of us hitched up four trailerboats and headed down for this weekend past to Jervis Bay.

The plan was (for me, anyway) pretty specific. We’d been looking at some Adventure Bound videos on Youtube showing some exciting kingie action from May 2007- specifically, downrigging for 20 kilo+ fish:

We arrived at our (amazing!) accom in Calalla Beach on Friday night and after a good night’s rest launched at the nearby boat ramp on Sat AM.

Seas were flat- maybe, too flat- so we rocketed over to Perpendicular for some bait gathering. Having not fished JB for around 20 years I was kinda rusty on where to go, but it didn’t take too long to get some whopper calamari in the tank:

‘Round to Crocodile Head and trolled those up to the Drumsticks- without a touch. Somewhat dismayed, we pulled the pin on that effort and headed up to the Banks.

Once there we downrigged live squid around the main humps to no result. Every so often jellybean yellowfin would bust up on sauris, but usually 30 minutes would pass with no action at all. Huge schools of sweep were finning out on the surface like there wasn’t a predator for miles. Checking on the VHF we heard that the swoffers in the team had scored on salmon:

That night at the local pizza restaurant we exchanged notes. The bloke at the bottle shop reckoned all the local anglers were on zeroes. I wasn’t too worried at our lack of success because 1. I was totally blown away by JB’s incredible range of options and 2. was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to get there from my place- close enough, to daytrip. The thought of chucking a chunk of cunje or a quartered red rock crab into some of those washes was giving me the cold shivers!

Day two, the weather had bumped up a bit. Fishing mate James decided to come up to the Drumsticks in his beaut new 5.8m Stinger so off we went, in tandem:

Once there we caught some mega yakkas and headed back out along the cliffs. No kingies on the squid or yakkas, but at least the other lads inside got a bag of table species. I was kind of surprised because the place looks so good, but have learnt over the years that anywhere can shut down, at times. We’ll be back, probably next month, and if the kingies won’t come out to play we’ll have the right gear to try some alternatives. Cheers, Andrew www.downriggershop.com.au

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