Christmas Eve Jewfish.

To escape all the pre-Christmas madness Greg and I decided to get a few hours in the water on Christmas Eve. We got going early and were in the water by 6:30am, the very first thing I see under the boat is a nice fat King George Whiting laying in the dent left by a sleeping Stingray. I let Greg know and he was soon in the water and lining up on the Whiting, I managed to get the whole sequence on video too. We swam around for a while and saw a number of small Jewfish but nothing big enough to take, so we moved to a new location a few hundred meters further along the reef.
We swam around at the new location for a while and after seeing nothing of note moved to another location.
The next section of reef we looked at was quite shallow but looked very good and fishy, I have never looked at this area before despite having dived all around it for years. Sometimes I guess we overlook things that are right under our noses. Greg found a nice edge dropping into some slightly deeper water and after dropping to the bottom noticed a nice sized Jewfish looking out at him from the shadows. Greg was quite surprised to see such a good fish in so shallow water, but wasted no time in taking the fish for Christmas dinner.

Greg's Christmas dinner fish.

After the previous weeks catch of Crayfish the Jewfish topped things off and being the perfect size for a family was sure to go down a treat. We decided to call it a day as we both had preparations to make for the next day and enjoyed a leisurely ride back to the marina.

Crayfish for the Christmas season.

After a few days of strong winds Friday the 13th was looking like being a good day to be on the water, so I decided to take an early season look at the Fad's just to burn some old fuel and check on the fish status.
I spoke with Greg about coming with myself and my son Jack and he offered to drive the boat for the day, saying he was not sure if he would get in the water or not.
We picked Greg up at 6am and then waited an hour for the wind to drop a little before beginning the 55km trip out to the Fad"s. After just over an hour of traveling we discovered that the first Fad was missing, most probably struck by a ship and sunk. We made our way to the next Fad 5km away and found the water a little hazy and covered by the red remnants of an algal bloom.  I have never had much luck when I have previously encountered these conditions and today was to be no different.
We made a couple of drifts and having encountered no fish we made the decision to try the next Fad.
While motoring to the next Fad Greg decided he was going to get in and have a bit of a swim, so on arrival my son Jack took the helm and Greg and I slipped into the water. The conditions were somewhat better but there were still no fish to be seen other than a school of immature fish sheltering directly under the Fad.
We made a few drifts and dives then decided to head back in to the West End of Rottnest and try and find a few Crayfish.

We arrived at my favorite Crayfish spot after about 30 minutes and set anchor before slipping into the water.
I swam over to the edge of the reef and breathed up before dropping to the bottom and looking under the ledge, I immediately spotted a very large Crayfish and wasted no time in looping it. I checked the Cray to make sure it was legal and finding nothing to the contrary in the bag it went. A short time later I added another large Cray to the bag, having 2 decent sized crays and feeling the arrival of the sea breeze we decided to call it a day and head home.

The days Crayfish.

My dog is not too sure what to make of this.

Over the weekend I spoke with my friend Will and we agreed to dive on Monday and look for some Jewfish and Crayfish. We launched at the Leeuwin boat ramp on the Swan River and headed out to Stragglers Reef.

We dived a few of our regular spots and it wasnt long before Will had a reasonable Jewfish in the boat. I concentrated more on finding Crayfish and soon had 4 in the bag, I even had 2 nice sized Mackerel swim past as I was swimming out of a cave with a Crayfish. 

Will and I moved location a couple of times and it didnt take too long before we both had close to a bag limit each. I added a nice sized Queen Snapper to the Esky and we decided to call it a day at around 2pm.

My Esky with the days catch after cooking.

The trip back to the ramp was nice and relaxing and we both soaked up the light cool sea breeze as we made our way through the port of Fremantle. We had a nice day out on the water and with a fitting end and a wonderful catch to enjoy with a bottle of wine for dinner in the coming days, a truly fitting start to the Christmas Season.