Headed out for a fish today with my uncle Glen (his boat) and brother in law, Brendan. With the forecast for winds to be easing around midday it was a later than usual start hitting the water around 8:30 with the plan to venture out to the 40m from rockingham and try and find a dhu or 2. Conditions weren't too bad with the easterly being quite managable on the way out.

I had gotten Brendan interested in the plastics and jigs lately and he had recantly gotten his first jigging outfit for his birthday which needed breaking in. Armed with some mcarthy plastics and a few demersal jigs we did a few drops on some good soundings of fish on the way out but to no avail. Once at our destination the first fish onboard was a nice 51cm KG to Glen on bait, followed by an undersize dhuie and snapper. Meanwhile Bren had given up on the plastics and gone for a nap (partying too hard before fishing) as I lost a decent fish on plastic.

By now it was midday and the wind had dropped right off to give us awesome conditions. I was hoping to find some sambos out there for some fun as we'd caught them in this area before and my wish soon came true. I noticed a big splash out the back of the boat which could only have been a fish, so I quickly wound up my plastic towards the surface and as I looked down into the depths I saw the silvery flanks of some decant fish swiping at my baby elf on the way up but not actually hitting it. I dropped back down a few times but they just wouldn't hit it so I quickly grabbed another rod that was already rigged with a jig and dropped it down to the waiting sambos. Jig jig jig and I could see the sambos fighting over it... BAM I was on! Not a big fish at all but they're always fun!

As I had hooked up Brendan was forcefully woken up and quickly dropped a plastic down for an instant hookup also.

I grabbed the PE3 outfit with the plastic on and quickly hooked up again, seeing the hook up 10m below.

There were fish everywhere!

After landing another sambo I tied on a popper to try for some surface action as there were splashes happening all around the boat. I jumped up on the bow and put out a few casts hoping for a sambo on the surface but after a few follows from fish, I realised the splashes weren't sambos but tuna, pretty big ones too. Tuna on the surface with sambos undernearth, I could see fish swimming everywhere! Gave up with the popper after no action from a few more casts and went back to the jigging. This time I got out the PE6 to put some hurt on a few fish!

Meanwhile Brendan was getting the jigging action down and really breaking in the new rod.

After a while we finally drifted off the sambos so we headed back to our mark and found them again. They were sitting down the bottom until we dropped our jigs down and worked them back up, then they would all follow!

They were getting bigger every fish, I had a split ring decide to end a solid battle, to then rerig and get pinged off on the next fish due to crossing lines. But we fought on!

We were getting tired by now after landing well over 20 sambos up to 25kg+ and it was as I had the PE3 back down and decided it was time to wind in when I hooked up again and quickly watched the little stradic 4000 start to smoke! I've never seen line leave a spool so quickly. 25mins later and I landed the biggest sambo of the day... the photo doesn't do it justice but it was over 30kg and hard to hold properly!

All fish were released well bar 1 small amberjack (I think it was?) that is destined for the bbq tomorrow.

Great fun day out, no need to wait till "sambo season" to get some good sambo action!