I gotta say that I haven't had too many "purple patches" but yesterday was one. It started Friday morning with a phone call from a long time fishing buddy who I rarely get the chance to fish with these days. Bob invited me to join him and his son Scott for a bit of bottom fishing on Saturday ( Grand final day ). The plan was to have a very early morning start and get back in time to watch the game. I usuall take folks out on my boat so I jumped at the chance to go out on Scott's and not have to be the skipper. Because they live in Mandurah, I had to get up really early....talking 2:30 am in order to arrive in Mandurah for the 4:00am start. The plan was to leave the jetty ( in Scott's backyard....lucky bugger live's on the cannals ) and under the cover of darkness sneak out to Scott's most secret Dhui spotts.....Well this was the perfect excuse to go out and buy the new light weight jigging outfit that I have been dreaming about so armed with the Mastercard I left work early Friday afternoon in search of the new fishing weapon. By 5:30pm I found what I wanted after visiting 5 of Perths largest tackel stores.....The Saltist LD 30, two speed reel and a matching Saltist 6ft ST LD 60-56 jigging rod....spooled the reel with 50lb multi color braid.....( bought it from one of our sponsors )......By the way thanks to every one who replied to my post asking for advice....Not only did I buy the new combo, I stocked up on an assortment of soft plastics went with the McArthy range, could't find any of the 10 inch ones so had to settle on 6-8 inch lures, Bullhead and Paddle tail minnows, pink/pearl was my favorite. I was really hard to find heads in the 2-4oz range. Finally found some Berkley Nitro 4oz Lumo Green Elevator heads ( see the photos )...Also bought a really strange lure called Pirates made by Daiwa...( see the photos )....;.Ok back to the fishing story. Somehow i managed to arrive only 15 mins late to Scott's place in Mandurah. After a quick brekkie from HJ's we loaded up the boat and got underway by 4:45 am...We settled in for the 26 mile trip out, it was not as calm as we had hoped and had to travelle at 18-20 knts.....we arrived at the first spot just as the sun hit the horizon. The weather forcast was good but we were greeted with 15 knts of wind and a 1.5 meter swell....not too bad in a 26ft glass boat....with the sun comes the wind...so armed with the new outfit and the soft plastic I made my first drop and started jigging....the boys went with bait and made jokes about my "gay" fishing out fit looking like a herring rod for a girl....well we spent about 20 mins at the first spot and nothing....Scott assures me not to worry that he has plenty of other locations...so off we go in search of the elusive dhui... 15 mins. later we arrive....Bob's first in and bang he's on....nice sargent backer...mean while I'm still lifting the rod up and down wondering about changing to bait when all of a sudden I get hammered and its finally time to see what this new outfit can do, 5 min later and the first dhui is up, not quite size so back down he goes on the release weight ..( Scott keeps an old overhead ready to do the job ).......Next up Bob catches a small red snapper....and the plastic gets its next victum, a nice 8 kg dhui to keep, the jokes about me fishing with condums start to change after the third fish falls victum to the jigger.....Bob finally gets a dhui on bait but not size......and then the plastic scores again just over size and its released to fight another day...and so it goes on, with my best fish weighing in at 11 kg...the end tally was me and my plastic with 6 Dhu fish....and the boys with 4 Dhu fish each on bait for a grand total of 14 Dhu caught in just over 3 hrs....6 of the fish were legal size !!!...of course we only kept our boat limit of 2 all the others were released alive and well....back to Scotts for beers and the game....my best half day fishing ever!!!!.....interesting to note, the boys caught a few other assorted species on bait.....my plastic caught only Dhu fish, nothing else....love the new outfit very light and super smooth drag, used the low gear on the 11kg fish, made the job really easy, money well spent and I am sold on the soft plastic....no more smelly bait for me at least not if I'm tarketing Dhu fish