Sammy Hitzke knew the weather wasn't perfect. He went anyway — and walked away with five flame tail snapper from one of the harder solo deep-drop sessions he has filmed for his YouTube channel this year.
The Australian deep-drop specialist was chasing his favourite eating species, the flame tail or queen snapper, on his usual ground 60 km offshore.
"It's a damn long way, but I tell you what — it'll all be worth it if we can find some delicious red fish," Hitzke said in the trip's intro.
He was honest about the conditions from the moment he punched out into the run. The boat's SeaKeeper was working overtime against a short, sharp swell that ate up his usual cruising speed.
"There's a bit more breeze out the back here, which is fine. It's not unmanageable," Hitzke said. "It's a short, sharp rock and roll."
A pair of hex-head lures went out at 22 km/h on bent-butt outfits with 37 kg line in the hope of intercepting a wahoo or marlin in the clean water on the way out. "Even at that speed, they won't blow out," he said of the lures, before reflecting at the end of the long run that no hits had come. "No hits on the lures, which is a bit of a shame. I would have liked a cheeky wahoo to kick us off."
On the deep-drop ground, Hitzke fished six-hook Mustad 12/0 rigs on a Wilson Assist P5-10 rod — the deeper-water version of the rod range he tested in earlier prototypes. His electric reel was powered by a 10-amp Wilson Assist lithium battery strapped directly to the rod, an arrangement he prefers over older boat-mounted setups.
"You don't have to plug them into Anderson plugs or anything like that that always seem to corrode out," he said. "You can just lift up your whole outfit. Mobile, agile, and hostile."
A steady run of ornate cod kept the deck busy without producing the species he wanted. The first flame tail eventually came up after multiple drifts.
"It's been very, very hard going. Little bit of head nod there. I can see some color. Yes, that's a red one. Only attacker, but it's a ready nonetheless," Hitzke said as the fish broke the surface.
By the time he had grafted his way to fish number five, the trip's big takeaway was already obvious. "We worked very hard for these fish today," Hitzke said. "I didn't want to chew early, that's for sure. Been at them for almost three or four hours, and yeah, finally got our bag, but that's all right. We got there in the end."
With the bag in the esky, he tried to drop into 200 metres for a jigging session over a kingfish or bar cod mark, but the current shut it down. "Pretty well impossible to jig with anything less than a house brick," he said. "It's almost three o'clock now, so I can potentially chuck the lures out for blue marlin, but as we know, those things take time. I do have to travel about 55 ks home as well."
A short mac tuna session on the inshore ride home was the only other fishing of the day. The much-promised flame tail catch-and-cook never materialised — Hitzke admitted as much on camera.
"I know we have a channel built on trust, and I spent a long time talking up a catch and cook this week," he said. "I lied to you. I did not do one. Ran out of time."
The video closed with a question for the comments section. Of his five flame tails, only one had a notably long tail filament. "Big flame tail — well, not physically big, but long tail versus short tail," he said. "I've got one long tail and all the rest are short. Are we dealing with a male versus female sort of thing? Or what influences tail length? If you guys know, let me know in the comments."