Max and James
My next two ledge apprentices were
Max Godfroy and James Lukin who
were also keen anglers from Perth.
I met Max last year and he managed
to score a few average sized mackerel,
but these boys were eager to upgrade
and get a hold of a few trophy fish.
These lads already knew the basics of
gas ballooning so all I had to do was
to fine tune their techniques and take
them to the ledges known as the big
fish producers.
The wind was blowing in a south-
easterly direction so I took the boys
to another one of my favourite spots
called North Two Mile.
The Two Mile Reef protrudes a
few hundred metres out to sea and
forms a small bay. This part of the
coastline is extremely deep and the
big Spaniards will often stack up in
huge numbers along this section of
reef. As soon as we pumped out our
skip baits the mackerel were straight
on the chew. Unfortunately we got
absolutely blown away by the resident
sharks and even though we hooked
over a dozen mackerel we weren’t able
to get a single fish to the rocks.
With such a low recovery rate I knew
we had to avoid North Two Mile
like the plague and find a different
location with less sharks. With the
swell predicted to be under a metre, I
decided to gas balloon directly off the
front of the Two Mile Reef. This ledge
is normally a reef fishing platform
which is very low to the water and can
rarely be accessed during the winter
months. With not as much fishing
pressure I knew there would be less
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