Are you using a sea anchor to drift? You may be drifting too fast if not.  

Is your bait on the bottom?

look for contour lines on your chart and sound around till you find a lump.  

 Spend one good day trolling behind the 5 fathom bank. We used to troll for hours for mackies all around the place. Not many mackies to show but manage to find some decent ground and lumps. 

Also use good quality baits, seem to get more fish when we use fresh local occy and mulies. 

Cheers

 As above make sure your always on the bottom, fresh baits / fillets, sea anchore is a must on most days.

 From memory, my GPS got cleared not long ago so cant help much, after the five fathom you wont hit good reef again untill after the 40/45s, so if youve got the weather right and the fuel head a little further. im sure theres another reef system around the 45s and then again after the fifties in line with the back of rotto, down she goes after that.

 If not traveling that bit furthur try a bit closer to rotto as thats reefy, i have found pros pots in the 30s before but very spasmatic, so you will need time.

 What ramp you leaving from?

As above , I have only fished from small boats out in the 30's . Keep trying and fish small, medium and large baits. A lot of my fish have been caught on the smaller gear but some times the big bait gets the fish of the day .

Only other thing i can suggest is fresh baits, use freh wrasse fillets, sand whiting or fresh squid. Fresh is best when it using bait .

Check out some of my vids, they are all ( the boat ones ) out in the 30m line from mindaries .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiMftAr0-g4&list=UUB_zUdPMNmGN6cfeHELkOlw&index=6

Cheers Grant ..

Have caught some good fish out on the five behind Garden Island as said previous good fresh baits are the best as well as well presented baits eg the way you set up your rig,a slow drift is best so use a drift anchor and check your baits regulary,a nice fresh wrasse fillet is dhuie candy if your not loosing rigs or snagging up your not on solid ground you could also try inbetween garden island and carnac there are some big flatties there to be caught plus fat kg's

Hi Joycey,

Its importamt to have a good sounder and work it correctly to find the right ground/fish as theres plenty out there!

I fish out there myself and deeper depths of say 43-55m are better to get schooling fish and a fine tunned sounder will help out bigtime!

If the drift is good a driftbait is deadly but faster drift's and currents then the patternoster is good!

Grant, good vid - some nice fish there out of a tinny!