Having exhausted my patience waiting for an F-Rib, I started thinking of different options. Unfortunately, right now is a terrible time to be buying new boats so I was thinking I'd get something later in the Summer if the F-Rib still hadn't turned up. As if happens, an ad came up on the local buy/sell Facebook group, for an Australian Quintrex 420 aluminium dory with 25hp 2 stroke yamaha and trailer. Now I wasn't really keen on the trailer option before as I'd have to fit a towbar to the car as well, but the more I thought about the fishing I end up doing 90% of the time, the more sense it made to go for something like that.
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| Real boat club... |
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| Easy to launch and retrieve. |
With the help of a friend we picked her up a couple weeks ago and then I had a towbar fitted to the car. Last week I took her out for a wee trial and a couple casts. She performed really well and on Saturday I had a guiding session with Andrew.
It was a cracker of a day and turned out to be a bit of a red letter day as anywhere we fished and anything we dropped gave fish! Fishing from the tinnie is much more comfortable and we both commented on how dry the ride is. I still use the Haswing Cayman GPS on its marine ply panel and although it doesn't look the prettiest on the boat, it still does the job effortlessly. I used my old transom mount for the transducer and I have to say I really enjoyed the whole setup. The outboard seems to be going well and we done 19-20kts on the day. In combination with using the trolling motor, the fuel consumption was pretty low.
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| This man again... |
On the fishing now, the pollock were stacked and hungry. Lure choice really didn't matter and they'd hit OTD but also on the retrieve. The fish were typically a bit skinny but very energetic on the fights especially for this time of year. Fish from 20m+ depth though would invariably come up blown up and we kept them, while no issues were had with fish from shallower water.
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| They were stacked. |
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| Some better conditioned ones too. |
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| Darker one... |
Andrew really loves his coalies though so we had to move to another spot for them. We got plenty on the metals and again they were skinny with a few better ones among them. Andrew reckons a better one was over his pb as well!
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| Pb coalie for Andrew. |
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| Sunny May days... |
We hit one last spot before calling it a day in the hope of getting a few cod. I got one but couldn't find the rest of them and Andrew hit some more hard fighting pollock before we headed in.
Recovering the boat was pretty straightforward too as it's fairly light and easy to pull on the trailer. We then divided the fish and said our goodbyes. Couldn't have asked for a better day's fishing and so glad it worked out well for Andrew as we had to work hard for our fish last time...
I'm pleasantly surprised with the way the fishing is firing up just now and can't wait for the next outing. Moreover, I really need to get a few sessions in for the trout. Hopefully I'll get more of this good weather this month for it...
Just a few thoughts on the boat now. It really feels much more robust, tracks better and offers a dryer ride than the sib. The amount of space is just fantastic too. Saying that, it's only rated to 4 people and feels a little less stable when for example 2 of you lean over the same side. I do feel that it'll make my island hopping sessions much easier though as I'm not worried about barnacles and sharp rocks while landing anymore. This will now be the boat I'll be using for all of my local fishing while I'll be taking the sibs further afield where access isn't as straightforward. Need to improve on my trailer reversing skills but thanks to YouTube I'm already making progress on that...
Tight lines!