February 2010

Email: lasue@wn.com.au http://www.murchisonboathire.com.au/

I spent last weekend in Perth and on the Saturday drove one of my 6.5m boats out to Rottnest accompanying a quad swim team.

above is a crude attempt at a stitched together panoramic of the start. We were in the middle wave of the

2000 odd swimmers so a lot of the boats had already left to go to Rotto.
Rotto is in the distance but obscured by the multitudes of boats

The only time I could take photos was when it was quite clear of boats, You should have seen the congestion
when the swimmers had to go around the marker buoys!
Next weekend is the big Kalbarri Sports Fishing Classic. This year I am all geared up and ready. The weather forecast
is for really nice days for a change, so am looking forward to it.
I will do a full report on it next newsletter.

The boys from Ranger Outdoors Bentley
Staff members from ranger Outdoors Bentley and a couple of mates were up in Kalbarri and hired the
7.8m boat for a few days.

They got into some nice fish with Chris Nickoll having the best luck of all.

Landing double headers of cobia, a couple of mackerel

and a dhuie among alot of other fish.

Damo nearly got himself spooled with this +-20kg sambo and Chad landed his first ever mackerel.

Dan was extremely please that his Hilux was able to launch & retrieve the 7.8m out without a problem.
(Not suitable for towing this boat on long distances)
If you want tackle, drop into see these guys at Ranger Outdoors Bentley, they know their stuff!

Local’s day out
Rob Tenaglia, a local crayfisherman deckie spends a lot of time on the sea but loves to get out in a rec boat and do
some shallow water snapper fishing.

Hiring the 6.5m with a couple of mates.

Lloyd caught his first fish! a small snapper. Rob got his snapper together with
a few tuna and this juvenile pennant fish.

One week, fish every day
David and Aisha were up for 2 weeks taking the 5.3m for 7 days. David struggled with the anchor,
and only fished one spot each day but sure got into some fish from those spots.

He spent some time trolling for mackerel and tuna, but the macs were off the boil, but little tuna were plentiful.

Aisha had all the luck or was a better fisher, landing all the good fish even getting a rarely caught
surf paroty.

Have you seen this?
Copied from www.sportfishing.com
Have you seen this? OMG! I just learned that they found a mummified mermaid in a marina in India,
apparently uncovered by the 2004 Tsunami! It's true! No, really it is! I know it is.
Do you get these emails? (Henceforth designated as "HYST"), of course. Doesn't everyone?
But if you go to http://www.snopes.com/ to see the real history of the ludicrous "true" news that folks so
quickly pass on. In the case of the above marina mermaid, Snopes reminds us that the 2005 mermaid
photos went around in 2003, but that year she'd been found by fishermen in the Philippines.
The lady does get around! Next year, no doubt I'll get two or three e-mails from guys
I know who seem like cogent, sentient beings that say in all earnestness: "Incredible!
Have you seen this???"
Of course topics of fish and fishing are at least as subject as anything else to absurd claims and facts
that hordes of the gullible quickly embrace. But as with marina mermaid, such false reports
aren't embraced only once. No, the HYSTs return again and again - Freddy Krueger lives,
on the internet - usually in slightly different form.
I was reminded of all this just last week, when an email came to me from a source who is definitely
not a stranger to fish and fishing, citing a huge white shark taken off California. As soon as I saw the photo,
I gave a not-this-one-again groan. Wrong on two counts. First, it's a mako, not a white.
(While that's evident from the teeth, it may not be evident to a general audience.) Secondly, it was
caught off Nova Scotia, not California. How do I know all this? Because, in the past four or five years,
this photo has come to me from well-meaning emailers time and again as either a white shark or a mako
and it's been caught off the Mid-Atlantic, Texas, British Columbia (that one proved particularly popular
for some reason) and elsewhere. In many of these, some enterprising prankster had further inserted an account
of how this great white shark pulled a commercial dogfish boat backwards at 7 knots.
I read it in the email; it must be true!
If you type in "mako shark" in the Snopes search box, you'll quickly learn the truth -that it is a monster mako,
a 1,082-pound female caught during a 2004 shark derby held in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Just short of
11 feet long, the mako yielded $3,000 in prize money.
Feel free to tell your buddy Cornelius the truth when he e-mails you this photo next year with an amazing
account of how this great white shark was caught by a pair of old bream anglers fishing with cane
poles below the Lake Conestoga dam.
Of course, not all seemingly outrageous reports that drop into your inbox are false. Despite
what Photoshop can accomplish, sometimes life really is stranger than fiction. I'm guessing some who
read this blog will remember getting the have-you-seen-this email with crazy shots of a big catfish struggling
at the surface of a lake with what appears to be a basketball stuck in it's mouth. Yes, it looked preposterous,
all right. But it was true. The real poop, on Snopes, is that a resident of Sandalwood Lake in Kansas
noticed a bright-red child's basketball moving strangely at the surface. He went out on a boat with his
camera and took the photos that then went quickly around the world on the web.
Most often Snopes tell us if a seemingly outrageous HYST e-mail is true or false. But sometimes
the search rather offers the satisfaction of kissing one's sister when the result is what Snopes calls
"multiple," meaning maybe partly true, maybe partly false (or, put another way, it ain't that simple).
That's the assessment of emails with a photo anything but amusing that alert you to the nasty practice of
shark fishermen on Réunion Island of using dogs and cats for live bait. The analysis finds evidence
that in fact this may have happened though not on the widespread basis the reports suggested.One rather silly bit of misinformation that only real fish heads (guilty, your honor) would note had surprising
legs when it went around a couple years or more back - i.e., it went around and around and around;
I received it probably a dozen different times. The emails trumpeted the "World-record piranha!"
or variations on that in presenting photos of a tigerfish from some river in the southern part of Africa
where these things live. That one I didn't need to check on Snopes since I knew the information was
incorrect though it is on Snopes. But I can't agree with Snopes on this one since it declares the status
as "undetermined." It is not a world record, it is not a piranha (it is a Characid, in the same family,
but a much larger and much longer species) and it didn't come from South America as do piranhas.
Everyone knows you can't believe what you read in emails, yet often a surprising number of recipients
seem to do just that. Before you pass on that next HYST email about some incredible fish or fishing event,
take a moment to check Snopes. A little skepticism is a good thing. (Not that I'm not occasionally suckered in,
also, when I pass along an email to get back a reply with a Snopes URL that leaves me
slapping my head with a resounding "D'Oh!"). Of course Snopes isn't always in the know. It never knew jack about a certain
Lonestar Bluewater Fishing Ranch in the Gulf of Mexico, for example.

Why fishing is so good
When you go fishing and you catch something, that's good. If you're making love and you catch something, that's bad.
Fish don't compare you to other fishermen, and don't want to know how many other fish you caught.
In fishing you lie about the one that got away. In loving you lie about the one you caught.
You can catch and release a fish; you don't have to lie and promise to still be friends after you let it go.
You don't have to necessarily change your line to keep catching fish.
You can catch a fish on a 20-cent mulie. If you want to catch a woman you're talking dinner and a movie minimum.

Bite of the month

This month goes to Aisha Li for her unusual catch of a surf parrotfish. Anchored up with
A burley trail out the back Aisha and boyfriend David were catching skippy, snapper and the likes
When along came this parrotfish. Hard fighting and good eating makes a deserved Bite of the Month.
Well done Aisha!
See all the previous Bite of the Month winners on my website.

Popular Northern Destinations

Thevenard Island
There are new managers at the Onslow Mackerel Motel, Colin and Rosa will now look after you on the mainland.
Rosa will take your accommodation booking if you would like to visit. Phone her on 9184 6586
Colin will sort you out with a lock up storage area for trailers and your vehicle when you are at the island.
Drew is still the Island manager: 9184 6444.
This year the 6.1m and 7.8m boats are already booked for Thevenard Island but there are still spaces available for adventures in this great place.
bookings@mackerelislands.com.au
Check out the website: http://www.mackerelislands.com.au/

Gnaraloo Station
Gnaraloo contacts for accommodation:
Barbara: 9315 4809
Email: bookings@gnaraloo.com.au
Website: Gnaraloo.com.au

Game, Bottom and Beach Fishing Action
These links will take you to Youtube showing some great action video clips taken from
my boats and also a very good mulloway from the beach.
Triple tuna hook-up
Dhuie and snapper
Beach mulloway
Archived Newsletters
After a lot of effort on my part, you can now view all my past newsletters in my Blogs.

I have made five blogs; you can view all of my 2005 newsletters with photos at
http://www.murchisonboathirefishing2005.blogspot.com/

And from January 2006 to December 2006 with photos @
http://www.murchisonboathirefishing2006.blogspot.com/

And from January 2007 to December 2007 with photos @
http://www.murchisonboathirefishing2007.blogspot.com/

And from January 2008 to December 2008 with photos @
http://www.murchisonboathirefishing2008.blogspot.com/

And from January 2009 to December 2009 with photos @
http://www.murchisonboathirefishing2009.blogspot.com/

And from January 2010 onwards with photos @
http://www.murchisonboathirefishing2010.blogspot.com/

They are quite long URL’s so add them to your favourites.

Noel and Robyn are willing to accept bookings for my boats at Port Gregory
I will deliver the boat down there for 2 or more days hire for free.
& return it to Kalbarri for you.

Remember if you rent our accommodation in Kalbarri you get big discounts on our boats.
Have a look on my website for the details, and check out the savings.


5-day weather forecasts, http://www.buoyweather.com/ go to virtual buoys, pick the location you want.
This is the one I go by!


Big bait – big fish
Laurie