www.murchisonboathire.com.au
MURCHISON BOAT HIRE DECEMBER 2008 ELETTER
fame and fortune. It’s been a very good year for the business, especially the popularity of the new
7.8m boat. It has been quite extraordinary considering that my advertising only started to kick in a couple of months ago!
The 6.1m is still the backbone of the business and the 5.3m just adds the cream.
All the boats now have new 4-stroke Yamahas that never miss a beat, so I am all set for the recession.
What recession? I have never been busier!
Every year my mate Bruno and I put our cray pots out. Catching crays is easy as long as you abide by a few rules!
It’s been an awsome season and we had our bag limit each day bar two.
The trick is to wait until the “Run of the Whites” which is usually after the full moon in December.
You can start from the 15th November but it is hard going with low numbers getting into your pots as the crays
shed their shells and hole up without venturing out until their shell hardens. We put our pots in on the Sat 13th December
with the first pull on the Sunday morning. A full moon over that weekend we were not expecting much but were
pleased with 5. From then on it all happened; we got 11, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, and 12 on Christmas Eve.
Most days we did not pull all 4 pots as the first pot would have 9 or 10 size in it, then the next also full so left the last two.
One of the days we counted 19 size crays in the first pot and then went home!
Rule 1/ Put your pots in after the full moon in December.
Rule 2/ Use good quality bait.
Rule 3/ Find rock and reef and drop the pot on the ocean side of it.
Rule 4/ Use wooden pots, the plastic ones don’t catch as well.
Son Jared and Bruno pull the pots while I do the hard work like checking the sounder
for good spots and gauging the crays
A pot full. More than the new daily bag limit of 6 for one person in one pot!
A cray with eggs. (in berry)
and one with “Tar Spot” These have to go back.
Male cray
female
Under water shot of the pots coming up.
Counting
and gauging.
On the last day, with the pots on board returning to the jetty, and a cray being gauged.
Snapper Spawning
This pic was circulated on the internet. It is a school of snapper in a spawning concentration
in Cockburn Sound in Perth. Not often seen but they recon it probably happens quite a lot.
Fishing for snapper in Cockburn Sound is banned during the spawning season.
I can see why!
Dave Tencate lives in Geraldton and got a group of mates and made a flying visit, hiring the 7.8m. The weather was not the best
early December so elected to have a troll for mackerel and leave the bottom fishing alone.
Shane O’Brien told me that it was the first time he had been in a boat big enough to stand up in and had never caught a mackerel!
Shane is the one holding his mac above his head, he was well pleased!
Fishing in Oman
Campbell Munro sent me these pictures. He has been working in the United Arab Emirates and returned
from a fishing trip to Southern Oman. He says the fishing was quite good, if a bit windy and cold. (what’s new?)
The beastie looking bream were hitting poppers, lures and flies
The GT’s were quite good
as well as the tailor.
They caught mackerel, queenies and tuna as well!
I didn’t know there was a fishery in Oman as good as this?
Lucky me, this Christmas, I got a Shimano Stella 8000SW!
It was the only gift with everyone dipping in to help pay. So it was on Boxing Day that I shot out with both sons to try it
out. I was hoping for a big fish to really test it out!
Son Ben got the first hook up within minutes, a standard mac around 9kgs on a Halco Laser Pro 190DD King Brown colour.
Then after what seemed forever, my Stella hummed. And boy did it go! There was no stopping this fish even on the 50lb braid and heavy drag. We turned the boat and gave chase, eventually stopping it under the boat after about 20 minutes.
My poor 20 year old ugly stick was creaking and groaning with the pressure.
We got to get a sighting of a +-25kg yellow-fin before it went down again.
You can see my Stella with the spool blurred, it was going out so fast! With the pressure on something had to
give and unfortunately the hooks pulled in the end.
Bite of the month
This months “Bite of the Month” goes to Andrew Martin for his 8kg pink snapper.
Andrew was out late December with girlfriend Bree in the 5.3m boat. Hooking up on a probable monster tuna that bust him off at the end of his 80lb braid line outfit, his other lure was just drifting along when this big snapper came up
and gave him the buzz of his life. Very nice fish on a lure Andrew!
See all the previous Bite of the Month winners on my website.
A couple of days later I invited Andrew and Bree out for a quick troll to try for one of those
big tuna. The water had turned a bit green around the Sand Patch & no sign of tuna! But Bree had all the luck landing her first mackerel, biggest fish ever & then went on to catch another mac & a small yellow-tail kingfish! Extracting them all from between the 5 other rods that had similar and identical lures on!
Garry Miller got amongst them aboard my 7.8m boat but it was the only one for the day.
Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club.
The next comp is the Kalbarri Ultra Light Comp. This is on the 24th & 25th January, a game fishing
warm up comp for our major comp the Kalbarri Sports Fishing Classic.
The Ultra Light is a game fishing comp with a max line class of 6kg line.
A red hot time of year to catch mackerel and tuna, and great fun on light line.
A good time to be in Kalbarri as the Australia Day holiday is on the Monday and
the town celebrates with a pretty good fireworks display on the foreshore and withouthaving to travel and get stuck in traffic for hours on end!
Damian had a couple of baldchin and a respectable cod.
Jason Robins shows off his catch, and he still had some in the esky!
First up Shane Demello was onto a very early season mac, quickly followed by the
Andrew Ng then got his mac. Caught on the 25th November, the earliest by far that we have ever caught mackerel and tuna here!
Here Marcus Chee fights his tuna. It is the first time he has ever been fishing! 
This northern blue-fin put up one hell of a fight, and Marcus was pleading for help in the end. He still has a lot of work to do on his “pump and wind” technique! It weighed in at 12kgs.
A bottom bounce later on produced this great cod for Justin Demello.
Only Stan Seow was left to catch a fish. Leaving it till the last moment a big bite on his bait made his braid spooled Riobi Safari outfit groan and sing. 
After considerable time, this more than a metre estuary cod
It was still the biggest tailor that he had ever caught!
My baldchin groper came up on an Octo jig, 
and the red-throats were big when we got a bite but a pretty slow day all round.
We only pick the real big ones and picking them was easy, I did not even get my shorts wet!
We are standing on the reef platform between Kalbarri and the end of the Southern Cliffs. There are plenty of abs but finding the big ones needs a bit of reef hopping.
These above were size but we left then as they were not quite big enough, 
but there were a few bigger ones on the reef above.
They have to be over 60mm; 
the one above has a lot of algae on it as it came from
Nick Dunn was up in Kalbarri early November and stayed for 5 days or so. He had the 5.3m boat hired for a day
This months “
Kalbarri Offshore & Angling Club, Local comp 22nd November 2008.
However Ashley van Viersen landed a few good mulloway from across the river last weekend.
2 pieces weld mesh, staggered & welded together with half inch Rio each side to strengthen it.
Kasey got a respectable GT from the back of the Ningaloo Reef, out from Tantabiddi, it went about 15-18kg.
Out the back of the reef, the sharks seemed to be very alert, although this coronation trout somehow got through the gauntlet. Diving-wise though, it was worth it, and despite the low vis in the gulf due to the big tides and wind, all involved had a good time.
Here are a couple of pi
During the school holidays big crowds gather at the pelican feeding here in Kalbarri. It still
This is just one random day that I stopped in to take a few pics
A misleading sign. Don’t bring your dog, they won’t feed it!
Total waste of time and money erecting a sign like this!
What should it read when they put the lines down????
This months “
Wife Sue got a double header first drop followed shortly by a dhuie.
Peter then got his dhuie followed by a small shark
Sue got another dhuie, must have been bite time as it had a cray down its throat with the feelers and legs sticking out!
I fished with jigs the whole time not touching a single piece of bait. I did as well as the others,
and an undersize dhuie on a different brand jig as
We tried to release one of the bigger dhuies, but when they get to this size, the release weight is just not big
Fishing Western Australia came on board this year as a major sponsor and the prizes were very good.
We had 5 quad bikes ferrying kids to and from the weigh station with their fish.
DPI came up and did a flare demo and let some of the kids
PROTECTING OUR FISH FOR THE FUTURE – WEST COAST
I just happened to be in Perth while the Mandurah Boat Show was on so went along to have a look.
Last time I was out it was quite rough coming back but right in the channel was this kite surfer.
Back into the river mouth.
The great barracuda caught by Cliff trolling at about 7 knots near South Passage. He was using a Halco Crazy Deep 7 metre lure. “The 5.3m runabout was just the right size to move around in the swell and wind to work with an angry Barracuda” Brad told me.
The Chinaman Cod caught by Brad in 40m plus water took a mulie/occy cocktail and was released.
Cliff took the time to dress his bait according to a good old South African rule.
Cliff holds one of several Rankin Cod for the trip and
Brad shows off his red emperor caught on fresh rankin cod leftovers over a drop off in 40 metres. “Lots of other fish were caught but the “forgot to take photos happened”. TRUTH”. Yeah sure Brad!!
Fish are fed at several times of the day, but feeding and touching is not recommended. Experience these beautiful fish at your finger tips. They are extremely tame and will swim around you hassle free. A must if Coral Bay is visited.
These underwater shots, taken by brad, were in the shallows. He just bent over and held the camera underwater. He has the same camera as mine; it’s an Olympus shock and waterproof, around $500.00 when I bought mine.
No! The camera is not edible!
Karen did well to land a mulloway in the big swell 
and Brett had this 1.25kg bream from the river,
Cheryl landed 5 tailor in the river 
while Graham caught an unusual catfish
The Southern Right whale and calf stayed in the entrance for quite a while this month but has since moved off further up the coast. 
I think she got a bit stressed, with all the boats, jet skies etc buzzing her all the
I tried to get a pic of the whale and the kids but the whale would not come up and the
Mark Mofflin emailed these pics of some of the fish they caught and said that the boat was great.
Jeremy Erdmann, holidaying up from Perth caught this 18kg mulloway from the old wooden service jetty on the flick rod shown in the above photo. The little Shakespeare reel was loaded with 5lb braid taking him about 45 minutes to land on the night of Monday 11th August. It was 3 hours after low tide and a couple of hours after the forecast bite time.
Some of the sunsets this month have been quite spectacular, this one over Chinamans last week
Red emperor were on the cards
and the resident big cod that lives in the bay paid them a visit.
The stripy tuna pictured was caught by Frank by sending out a mulie 4 mtrs off the back of the boat. “What the hell are you doing Frank?
This Cobia was a cruising down some swells before it hit a floating mulie. It was a welcome catch for the brand new
Dave had the biggest at just over 10kg
and Joe had some nice ones too
Dave with his 16kg Wahoo. These things go twice as hard as a Mackerel.
Joe with Dave’s Cobia. One of three caught for the week. The other two were released.
Sabby, making the 8kg Pinky looking as big as he can.
Gnaraloo station looking east situated on the escarpment overlooking the ocean
The cabins that we stayed in were pretty basic. There is other accommodation such as the very basic Shearing Shed
The cabins were just one room with gas stove, fridge, freezer, table, beds and cold salt showers with next to zero water pressure.
We caught fish! 
Triple hook-up on red emperor, 
and John Hoye got two coronation trout.
Rankin cod for John, 
10kgs of red emperor for Paul, the biggest for the trip, while Sue out fished everyone catching 7 red emperor.
The Mackerel were big; son Jared got this 20kg one on a live bait and burnt his thumb on the spool in the excitement!
This 31kg mac I got was the biggest for the trip 
& Paul shows off the teeth of his 22kg fish
A first for me this trip was my first decent fish on salt water fly. A small dart made my day!
Sharks were not as much a problem as I expected and came to the boat when hooked. 
The odd spangled emperor held by Ashley
The best way to get the boat out of the water is to be prepared! First up make sure you reduce your tyre pressures down to 20lb.
This is how not to do it! These guys got bogged, decided to snatch the trailer out from the bog hole and forgetting to
The snorkelling was great and the birds friendly.
Pumping the tyres up to bitumen pressures at the King Waves Kill Sign
I have to award “
Jason and Dave Grant picked a great day out to take the 7.8m boat up to the
So it was a surprise for George when this sambo grabbed his line
Kassey and Neil with some very good rankin cod 
and again with XXX size coral trout
Mark got a couple of big ones 
followed up with a lot more coral trout making it a very successful trip.
The afternoons glassed off after the strong easterlies in the morning. 
There were plenty of mackerel around