There is deep dropping with electric reels, and then there is doing it the hard way. On a recent episode of Fishing Edge, presenter Lee Rayner went looking for a feed of bottom fish in 120 metres of water off the South Coast — and did all of his winding by hand.
"Today we're fishing in 120 metres of water chasing some bottom fish," Rayner said as he set up over what is normally marlin territory. His logic was simple: the same reef that holds good marlin fishing tends to hold good bottom fish, so he kept two marlin rods rigged "just in case" while dropping baits for the table.
The main target was nannygai, but the South Coast served up a mixed bag that included ocean perch, flathead and even a gemfish — along with an endless run of slimy mackerel that turned simply getting a bait to the bottom into a challenge. Rayner fished a paternoster rig with a mix of dead and live baits, betting that a livey might tempt the big John dory and trumpeter that also haunt the deep reef.
He framed the whole trip around the rising cost of living, joking that the crew were heading offshore for "some tasty treats to eat" — while trying not to dwell on the "$3 a litre" fuel it took to get there.
Doing it without electric reels is not for everyone. Rayner's deckhand made no secret of being reluctant to crank 120 metres of line by hand, and Rayner reckoned they would wind something like 30 kilometres of line over the course of the day. The reward was a steady procession of quality nannygai — "Haven't seen one like that for a long time," Rayner said of one standout fish — broken up by the ocean perch the pair came to dread hauling up from the depths, a fish he wryly noted some call "poor man's lobster."
There were practical lessons threaded through the session. For pinning live slimy mackerel, Rayner ran the hook through the bait's nostrils and set a shallow back hook so it could kick naturally. When it came time to handle a toothy flathead, he offered a safer alternative to the thumb grip: "You just grab them like that. You don't tend to drop them or get spiked." And at the cleaning table, he made the case for leaving the skin on a flathead fillet — "I like to leave the skin on because it goes nice and crispy."
Undersized fish and the gemfish went back over the side, and with a forecast nor'easter set to swing hard to the south, Rayner called it once the esky held a feed. It was, as he put it, "more about just getting a feed" than chasing a trophy — proof that a productive day on deep reef does not have to mean a boat full of expensive electronics.
