Well, seeing as I'm not on the voting panel for the Shorecatch comp, here's my long weekend fishing story / entry - albeit sort of non-eventful yet sort of eventful, lol.

As you saw a couple of weeks ago, got a new second hand donk put on due to the old one well and truly dying and was hoping that things would just go smoothly but had an inclination that it might not due to old fuel. 

http://fishwrecked.com/forum/shoutout-australia-wide-marine-servicing

Had been quite a while since last mission so I was quite excited to take the missus and dog out to see what we could find.  Started a treat, got the ropes off and start reversing off and bammo, stalled.  Couple more times, more stalling.  Knew it was a fuel issue even with new filters etc so started draining the filter which slowly allowed more revs and longer between stalls.  Ended up dropping a couple of liters and we were away, albeit rather nervous about how far we'd get.  Anyway, rev's up and the new old girl is humming and we're off to the islands.

https://vimeo.com/425768224

First stop was Pirate's cove for a quick snack and run around for the dog, being her first trip.  Trolled some squid jigs behind West Lewis and the water was dirty as the dogs farts given the rain the week before, so expected it to be very hard going catching anything.  Gave it a good half an hour and decided to cruise to the back of the next island to do some light tackle popping for queenies and trevs, second cast and the missus is followed in by a hooter squid.  Couple of quick casts and we had half a dozen good squid and had probably lost as many with the squadrons being flighty and only being in one small area.  Gave it another half an hour and it appeared the black water had scared them off, so up onto the beach for a bbq and swim (freezing if you're a northerner) so was pretty glad the water was too dirty for spearing.

Anyway, couple of cans down and we had figured we'd done pretty well given it looked like we weren't even going to get off the ramp.  Headed back past the little hot spot with no more squid in sight and moved down another couple of KM's and got onto another half dozen right before the tide turned (very timid).  Decided to call it a day as it was nearing 4 and still 30mins to the ramp, hummed back to within 3nm of the ramp when the steering locked up with an issue in the helm.  When you don't use your boat as much as you should, it definitely has a way of telling you!!  Got it back to the ramp with a bit of force and tilt adjustment and just general willing it to do what was needed.

https://vimeo.com/425767515

Anyway, rang Matt at Australia Wide and he said have it in to me today and I will get it sorted (even with the yard full of boats) and I will get it back to you by the weekend - legend!

Was a pretty stressful way to release stress which in the end resulted in some less stress and a belly full of squid rings and a couple of packs for the freezer.  All in all successful and weeded out a few more gremlins to get 'little beauty' back to some former glory.

Cheers,

Adam

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