What an exciting trip down to Port Macdonnell for the start of the barrel season. We had our sights set on a barrel Tuna but a Mako stole the show. Jules had caught a mini Barrel estimated at 60kg in the morning so we decided to head out to do some bottom bouncing.
One thing we had learnt with Covid was none of us had any fish in the freezer so knowing the bottom fishing was awesome we decided that some Flathead, Gurnard and Gummy Shark would be awesome to put in the freezer for all the girls, just incase 🙂
It was decided to head out to the 100 meter mark and try for some food fish. Its to deep to bottom burley so we put a handful of Pilchards in the burley muncher at the back of the boat. You never know … right? we bagged a dozen nice Gurnard and 6 Flathead when Tracey spotted a mako in the water behind the boat. Jules thought she had seen something earlier but there are alot of seals out there and they swim with a flipper out of the water looking like a shark by the untrained eye. Everyone brought their lines in, nt a quick thing at 100 meters and Skipp got a shark line ready.
A couple of weeks prior Jules and Trace burlied a mako as well. It was only about 4 foot long. With great expectation at the time they cleared the deck waiting for it to jump and do somersaults which it didn’t. In fact it was the easiest catch with having to force feed it the bait, the leader didn’t even leave the reel and we patted it on the head as we put it in the eski.
This one though was a whole different story It took off flat out as soon as it grabbed the bait, it lept out the water it somersaulted and skipped across the surface. It was awesome.
It behaved terribly at the side of the boat biting Jules on the top of her finger, and just being a pain twisting everything up. When we replayed the video footage we all freaked out and realized how lucky Jules was to still have a hand. We finally got it in the boat and subdued but it was an awesome sight to see.
Mako is one of the best eating sharks so we were all pretty stoked to share it out.
The full video will tell you the story, we made a heap of mistakes so hopefully the next one will be closer to text book than this one. YES there will be a next one, Both Jules and skip want a bigger one than Kerry”s and Ren In QLDS is hanging to get down as soon as the boarders open.