Trout Lollies by Lee Brake

The water was pouring past the rock bar as our boat sat anchored in around 30ft of crystal clear blue. It had been a hard day's fishing with the islands yielding next to nothing. The motion to head for home was approved unanimously, but then I suddenly spotted a large glistening, silver herring in the bait bin.

The herring was somewhat soft and battered but it threaded smoothly on a 7/0 Mustad Big Gun hook. Once rigged with a half hitch around the tail to hold it in a streamlined fashion, it looked incredibly appetising. The bait hit the water and I started to help with the boat cleaning when suddenly all hell broke loose!

The Ultragraph 4000 rod bent to the reel seat and the Shimano reel screamed. I lunged for the outfit and was able to turn the large bottom dweller away from solid rock. As I lent on the outfit I was rewarded with a flash of orange and the shout of "trout!" rang out. It was a quality 63cm fish and the saving point of the day.

While the day was largely a failure the last fish made the rusty cogs in my brain tick and I decided to wander down to my local ramp with a cast net. I found the deep water off the pontoon alive with the same shimmering herring that tempted the trout. I decided to put the 12ft monofilament cast net to use and gathered several dozen.

Now these weren't your average estuary herring, these were a palm sized blue water variety. While at the ramp I received an extremely useful tip from a gentleman - his advice was to place the fresh herring in airtight plastic bags with a healthy covering of rock salt. I bowed to his knowledge and froze the fish in bags of 12 with plenty of salt.

Our next voyage saw us targeting trout along a patch of rock just off Scawfell Island. The rock breeched the surface yet dropped away to over 30m deep relatively quickly. We fished the first of the run-in tide and started with squid bait. A few undersized parrotfish and sweetlip were our only reward. That all changed however when the salted herring came out of the esky.