A curious case of humpbacks and samsons.

A few weeks earlier, while on a holiday trip to Perth, I managed to hook up with a friend of a friend's who owns a boat and he was super kind to bring us out for a quick half a day's jigging in the shallows. Weeks prior to the trip, we kept a tight watch over the seasonal change that resulted in unpredictable weather. Just few days before the trip, I was visiting down south and experienced winds in excess of 140kph, ripping trees off the ground taking down power lines and a gas station.

Fortunately, the weather calmed down a bit and 2 days prior to the day trip, wind and tide forecast indicates conditions that are OK, not ideal, to head out to the shallow reefs and drop a couple of jigs in the hopes that the samson's still there. The swells were quite pronounced up to 4-5 meters at times with winds up to 12 knots with a forecast of picking up to 15 knots later in the morning. A small window of opportunity and we took it.

With his speed boat, we were at our first spot just under 30 minutes, the sounder was quite bare with occasional schools of baits as we cruise around a bit looking for bigger blotches. We decided to drop some jigs regardless and aimed at demersals at the bottom instead.

Upon several jig drops and knocking on the bottom, we managed to hook up a couple of pesky scorpion fish and a small dhufish, not the legal size basically. It was rather difficult to snap any pix as it was very rocky and not the smartest thing to mess with a scorpion fish.

With a GoPro latched on the other side of the boat, I managed to capture some decent fights of my mate using my pimped out Shimano Stradic 6000FJ paired with a Giant Killing PE3 rod.

The best part about this short trip out? A pair of humpbacks came to check out our pimped out tackle!

Tiny Samson but BIG on fight to the end. The pimped out Stradic didn't break a sweat.

Feisty sambo was no match for the pimped out tackle.

Hook in mouth, jig slapping the cheeks, surrendered.

There was no big Sambos to be found, skipper took pity and gave us his pink snapper instead.

Another small Sambo with BIG fight all the way to the tip of my pimped out Ocea Jigger & Giant Killing Long Fall. No contest, didn't even take any drag but sure as hell worth more than its weight.

 

Short but strong fight all the way to the top.

While jigging, we heard puffs and big splashes not far from where we were jigging and we saw a pair of humpbacks swimming around us. Never would we imagine to be able to witness any whales and they were UP CLOSE! We were awestruck and gaped at the sheer size of these gentle giants and forgot about our jigging.

The humpbacks decided to come even closer to check us out, occasionally peeking out of the water with a curious stare keeping the calf at bay. The video above shows how close they were to the boat, iPhone video with no zoom and no post processing, as it is. With so many years of OZ offshore fishing, never have my mates seen any this close.

The curious whale experience alone was worth the short and unfruitful jigging trip. I'll surely be back to hunt these famous big sambos when the time is right.