Tea tree winners

It was 4am on my 28th birthday, opening morning of Tea Tree & my alarm clock, who is also my 9 month old daughter, was right on time. But today their would be no snooze button to hit because I had, with out doubt the biggest day of my life ahead of me

We had just sold up our first home in glen waverley & settlement was today at 2pm. To make matters worse I could not get the day off work & still had to work in yarraville, then go to beaumauris to place an offer on our new block of land in mount eliza & then meet stinga at yaringa.

Stinga had fished sun up on this eventful day & was keeping me updated on every fish. He did dam well on his own seeing around 10 reds to 5kg hit the deck. Due to both of us having a hectic few months moving our new families into new areas we hadn't had much of a chance to scope Western Port out for snapper this season. In fact we only entered on the very last Saturday after I sent him a text during the week which had only two words in it "Tea Tree?" & that's all it took for us to be psyched about it.

We knew western port had bigger fish & although we have enjoyed fishing PPB of late the mysterious muddy waters of the port was the place to be.

By the time I got to yaringa I had worked in yarraville, settled on my first home & bought another all  on my birthday & I was just so relieved to be there with me mate. I kept telling him as we were driving out of the yaringa channel, dude were gonna win you know that, it just feels right.

Previously we had discussed our game plan & after stinga only landed school fish  around the  bouchers & Bolton channels it was time for a change. We ummed & rrrrr'd about we're to go & we had discussed corinella regularly. It was a long drive but, if we wanted to give ourselves the best possibility we knew we had to be there & decided to make our way.

The mood was up as I was just on the biggest high, first place we chose was wide of Elizabeth island in 6m of water. The run out tide was slowing & we knew nothing much would happen until it turned. After waiting 30minutes after the turn & time getting away from us we made the decision to find the spot we would have dinner & spend the night. We went further up into corinella & pulled up in an area where there were a few boats & had some dinner. Slowly one by one all of the boats started leaving, we also hadn't had a sniff & said to ourselves if we're gonna move for the night it has to be now. Up anchored & moved again.

Post Tea Tree win we have discussed the decisions along the way that have made the most significant impact. Our next two, we believe won us the competition.

We chose an area without a boat in sight. Very quiet, 5-6m of water with an undulating rocky floor. While we sounded no fish it looked like a big snapper hunting ground.

We chose to burley hard. Something we rarely do in western port. We felt dealing with the rat fish to get to the gold would be worth it. So I clipped pretty much a barrel filled with anything & everything to the anchor & down it went.

The burley was working perfectly, we were getting snapper in singles split about 40 minutes apart. As stinga fell asleep I was lying there looking at the rods just so happy to be there after the pressure was off finding a place to raise my new family. I was so content I too fell asleep. So asleep I missed one of the rods screaming off, stinga had to wake me up to net his 5kg red. We were up & about now after both having a short nap. We changed all of our baits to fresh squid & the air seemed electric. We were discussing the length of fight time we have had with previous snapper & come to the conclusion we havent seen a snapper battle over 4 minutes. even on 4lb.

The run in tide was starting to slow, both our phones were out of battery but we put the time to be around 10.15pm. I said to stinga, 10 minutes mate, one of those rods will zing. 2 minutes later stingas Saragossa 14,000 on a terez stick keels over and line is peeling off. Stinga grabs the rod & the battle begins.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about the fight, roughly two minutes in while casually leaning on the net I said, "bigger than the last fish". To which he replied "ah, yeh there's a bit of weight there".


It then surfaced in the night & we got of glimps of it. Stinga said "yeh it's bigger probably six".

After it saw the boat it took off again, peeling line at will.  I was then thinking about our previous conversation about fight times & I said, "you know bro, this is the longest snapper fight I have ever seen". I think then the tension started to build a little. Stinga kept repeating "I'm just gonna take this easy". After not too long at all I had another crack at netting it. The fish had pretty much given up by now & just fitted into the net.

Still there was no screams or hugs as without big knobs or bumps this fish in the dark just looked like a standard 5-7kg fish. It wasn't until I tried to lift in into the boat I started to get very nervous.

With the fish lying on the deck of the boat, we were scared to put a weight on the fish incase we were way off & theres nothing worse in a fisherman that calls a fish bigger than it is. After a moment I said to stinga "mate, we just won the Tea Tree"

Our spring scales had the fish at 10kg+ but after weighing in 10 times we still didn't believe its accuracy. It was only when it measured close to 1m we started to really believe it.
With out knowing the time we rushed back to make weigh in at Hastings by 12pm. It was the sweetest 45 minute drive in a boat I've had. It was mostly quiet for the journey as we were both taking it all in. I wasn't surprised at all it had happened to us, I'd expected that we would do well, even predicting our win in a good luck Facebook status to all competitors.


After a sleepless night and anxious afternoon talking to many of Victoria's great fisherman stinga finally had that trophy & we had won the first time we had entered. It didn't seem real until I heard the presenter say "Victorian amateur snapper champion". The four sweetest words a vic fisherman can hear.

I couldn't be more happy for stinga, he deserves to have that trophy on he's mantle piece. He is a silent achiever & often il be talking to him as I do most days & he will forget to tell me he has bagged out on snapper the night before.


Was it just our lucky day or was it years of putting in the hard yards, spending countless hours solving the worlds problems while not catching a thing. There was one failed session which we remember vividly. We launched with out bait, only a burley log to catch our fresh bait which we had done many times before. One of us failed to seal the burley trap properly & we lost all our burley, no squid jigs on board so home we went.

Was it lucky we used fresh squid, was it lucky we chose to fish corinella, was it lucky we burleyed hard & was it lucky we fished for 20 hrs straight? Or were we just lucky to be in the right place at the right time?

I believe you make your own luck & when I look at that trophy I know we deserve every bit of that
hand made little snapper.... & the awesome Jarvis walker gear.

Maybe one day we can win it again

Tdogg