Subject: Belated fishing report for 15/04/10
Date: Tuesday, 20 April 2010 12:15
G'day Ladies and Gentlemen,
I do apologise for the delay in writing this report but life has been a tad hectic since arriving back in Oz after our whirlwind round the world trip last week and I had to dash down the Gold Coast shortly after my exciting trip out last Thursday.
All I can say though is 'Home sweet home!' Especially after concluding our trip in a very smelly and polluted Hong Kong. I could not wait to get back and take the yak for a spin, but the first few days saw such bad weather and wind that I had to console myself with (very unsatisfying) beach fishing. For a change I have something to report though...
I meant to head out early last Thu, but woke to quite a heavy shower at 4am and was reasonably happy to move my alarm an hour ahead to 5am which saw similar conditions. By this time our lovely 5 month old lass was awake and after helping out with the morning chores, it was 7am before I headed for the middle groyne and started to 'saddle up'.
When I got down to the water's edge I saw that someone (any takers?) had beaten me to it by the marks in the sand, but there was no-one that I saw out there apart from stink boats. There was a 6/10 cloud cover which later improved to a 4/10 and already a reasonably stiff 8kt SE breeze blowing; still nice and protected in the bay though; water clarity was about 5/10. I saw some bird activity out towards Jew Shoal, but knew that the wind was predicted to freshen, so I chose to rather pursue the few birds which were also working around the river mouth.
I rigged up with a mackerel special laden with a nice big pilly on one rod and my favourite hard bodied lure on the other and set off. Hardly had I crossed in line with the groyne on the eastern side of the river mouth and my overhead with the mackerel special on started screaming, completely waking me from my remaining slumbers. At last! I thought, as so far this seaon I must be the only yakker who hasn't landed a mackerel of any kind (not that I had been out millions of times, but that's no excuse). A couple of minutes later after an 'odd' struggle my hopes were dashed as a metre plus bronzie appeared underneath my kayak - bugger!!
Oh well I thought, at least a bit of excitement and rigged up again continuing along further up parallel with the north shore for about 5-10 mins. As the wind was now definitely freshening I decided to turn around and head back towards MG. A tough paddle right into the teeth of a now around 10kt SE'ly to about the same spot where I hooked up before saw me hook the same bronzie once more (or so it seemed - similar size, and unfriendly attitude; the buggers have a go at you when you try to retrieve your tackle!!) and this time brought 2 or 3 of his mates up towards the surface as well as a result of his struggling.
Now I saw some bird activity up towards Tea Tree bay and since it was more sheltered in towards the headland I set off in that direction. As I passed about 400m wide of MG the overhead went off once more, this time more lively, but again only a slightly bigger bronzie surfaced - this was getting irritating, they were taking all my good pillies! A paddle out towards the western edge of Granite Bay saw no further action, but then I spotted some bird and surface action a bit wider in the wind affected water and (eagerly, but reluctantly as I knew what the paddle back was going to be like) I headed out there, but by the time I got there everything had disappeared and I headed straight back towards the headland, battling against the wind, only to see a school of mackerel/tuna moving rapidly and undisturbedly past in the calmer waters next to the headland; couldn't catch up with them even if I had an outboard though! I then did a couple of drifts along with the wind sending a pilly to the bottom with a heavy sinker, but not even a touch.
Again I saw some surface activity a bit wider and thought 'no way, I'll have to paddle back against that wind again' but this time it was much more pronounced and there were a couple of stink boats following it and throwing lures, so I decided to pursue finding quite a tight bundle of baitfish with predators smashing through them continuously. This time I got my mac special and the pilly I had on a treble to pass perfectly right next to the bait school and held my breath as I kept paddling. Within a couple of seconds the overhead screamed followed a couple of seconds later by the spinning outfit - a double hook-up, Whooohah!!! Both bronze whalers!!! Whoohah no more as they really made a mess of my lines and tackle, the bast***rds!! Is Noosa aboriginal for bronze whaler??!! With that I decided that's it, I've had enough fun for one day and started paddling back towards MG. I rigged back up with a mac special loaded with a small pilly (as the bloody sharks had taken all the good ones!!) and paddled back, this time just enjoying the day and the scenery - the wind had by this time eased a bit and it was nice and sunny. When I came back to within 400m of MG the overhead screamed once more and I thought 'if this bloody shark takes my mac special I'm gonna be very P*d off', but this time saw a much more energetic run absolutely stripping line off and about 5 mins later saw me landing a 83cm spotty that went just under 4kg. By the time I had yahooo'ed and laughed with excitement admiring my first mac for the season the breeze had taken me a good 300m further out and I thought 'well if there's one, there must be more' so I loaded up with another pilly and set for the shore. Not 5 mins later and probably only 300m from MG the overhead screamed again and after a good fight another nice mackerel appeared under the yak, accompanied by 3 good sized bronzies, one of which had a go at him before I could get him in, but only managed to take some bark off behind one of the pectoral fins - cheeky little so'n'sos!! This fellow went 90cm and just under 5kg and I managed to get 5kg worth of prime fillets from the 2 of them. I thought this was also a spotty, but after closer inspection it also has some bars dorsally - is this a barred mac or what?? Maybe someone can enlighten me?
Any case, so after all was said and done and easy paddle back in saw me into shore at 1pm with a tally of 5 bronzies and 2 nice mackerel - a very happy camper!!!
Till next time, tight lines
LeRoux
(Mackerel virgin no more!)
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