While trying to retrieve the gar in the current, I noticed the heavier weight of the classical squid connected to it and, was she connected, she was stuck so much that I just lifted her into the boat without the net.

Within the matter of one hour we had another few squids but not Kingies. We knew about how good live bait squids can be for Kingfish but we like squids too much to use them as live bait, so if the Kingies were hungry they had to eat gar.

By 12 the wind had moderated considerably and a quick phone call to Terry at the bureau saw us contemplating a very quick trip to a ground that we love fishing off of the north coast of Kangaroo Island. This is a true paradise of lime stone bottom that has always produced for us plenty of King George whiting, snapper, and crayfish, and with dodge tide just the day before the temptation was too strong.

A quick check on the GPS told us that trip would take around 30 minutes ( going very fast) so after all we knew that area that well that even if Terry had told us that we only had a 2 hour break before another change would hit us again, we decided to go. Vince did a marvellous job in baiting those two pots with the rock species that I caught while he was fishing for gars on the way down in the still very choppy conditions.

Once there the 2 metre sea didn't make our life any easier in locating these very small ledges. Knowing it wouldn't have been easy I headed first for the bigger one in this area. It is around 2 metres in 35 metres of depth. Once founded and marked it, it was just a matter of dropping the pot and pulling it right into the ledge. Ledge 2 was not as easy to locate.

I knew I had to be close, but finding a one meter ledge in a 2 meter sea at 35 meter of depth from a boat under 30 feet is never going to be easy. Fortunately we got there around slack water and I decided to mark it on the assumption that the ledge would have had "colour" over it and that was what I mainly relied upon.

I reckon it must have been because of the words of Terry at the bureau that I was in such a hurry that we just left this one where it landed and decided to head straight back into the shelter of the peninsula. There had been only another time in my entire boating life that I had missed the opportunity of fishing this ground and that was one afternoon that I left North Heaven with my fishing master Bill and my friend watchmaker Grant in the middle of a South Westerly change heading for KI for an overnight trip.

I can never forget the words of Tim Marsh, as he saw as launching the boat and on our way to Emu Bay, "surely whiting aren`t so expensive at the market to justify going down to the Island in this weather". But I can never refuse a lecture of Professor Bill, once he says we go, I go. Bill would have to be one of the best skipper of cats in the world. I can never forget one day, before taking delivery of my boat, when speaking with Bill, who as always and only owned Cats for the last 30 years, after I asked him whether he would teach us (me and my brother) how to use it properly he asked me: "How long have you been boating in a monohull for ?" and after hearing that it had only been six months he added: "thanks god, because it is almost impossible to teach anyone with a lot of experience in a mono how to use a cat properly".

It is only seeing Bill taking it in a 25-30 knots South Easterly, with a full outgoing tide, from Adelaide to Emu Bay, that would convince anyone on how good these cats really are. Anyway back to the trip. Instead of heading nose into the wind we decided to head back towards Rapid Bay and then south to CJ, that would have made the trip into the choppy conditions shorter and it would have also have given us another shot at the kingies.

Approx 30 minutes and a few songs later we were back anchored on Rapid heads dreaming about the crays we would be eating on New Year's day. Within a matter of minutes the wind had started to build almost a one meter sea right under the cliffs and the fact that nothing, not even the squids, seemed any more interested in our live gars, made us decide to head back home, were a hot shower and a good meal would have certainly have made up for the busy but not extremely rewarding fishing day.

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