Sweetie conditions. 10Oct12

TR by sunshiner

Wind: Light SW-SE early before glassing off and swinging to NE
Swell: small southerly
Current: at Little Halls Reef and Halls Reef, gentle to north, swinging to gentle southerly later
Launch point: Middle Groyne
Participants: jaro, daveyG, baptism, sunshiner

Big occasion for me today: I launched my new Supalite X for the first time, and paddled with a different paddle.

Jaro and I launched together, before baptism and daveyG were even in the carpark.

Launch time, new boat about to get its first bath.

No sweat, for either of us. The new fibreglass paddle felt quite strange as it was noticeably lighter, but it still managed to push the water backwards when I needed to accelerate to avoid getting a wet bum.

A few minutes later we were ready and off, heading NW for Little Halls Reef initially, and then onward depending on the wind situation we found there. I had been a bit concerned about a noticeable spike in the wind strength and direction which had hit Cape Moreton at 2300hrs and was just now showing up on the automatic weather station at Maroochy airport. Jaro and I had discussed it before launch, when there was almost no wind at all at Main Beach, and concluded that it may not even reach Noosa. This turned out to be accurate, but it is better to be aware of such possible unforecast weather changes than to be ignorant of them and bear the possible consequences. I don’t think any of us would relish being out at Halls Reef if the wind suddenly came in from the SE at 20 knots.

Anyway, conditions offshore were superb. Jaro and I paddled along trolling our HLP, mine a shallow runner in Qantas colours, his a deeper runner.

About 700m short of Little Halls Reef my trolling reel started clicking, not screaming, and I subsequently put the first fish into the new boat.

Australian bonito, kept for bait. I was thankful it wasn't a grinner.

The wind was still light and variable at Little Halls Reef so, seeing no sign of surface activity, we pressed on toward Halls Reef, another 2.5km or so further north. This distance was covered without further interruption, unfortunately. Jaro had brought a pile of banana prawns and some pillies so resolved to do some bottom bashing while I opted to troll in toward the beach to see if I could stir up any large predators, which I couldn't although I did find some baitfish being harrassed minimally by a lone tern.

Having heard nothing on the radio at this time, I was pretty sure that jaro was having a quiet time also. Even so, I figured I may as well join him and so paddled back east to the Halls Reef mark where I spotted a pedaller heading for the mark from the south. This turned out to be baptism, who'd driven up from Brisbane this morning. The two of us then kept jaro close company as he started to catch a few fish.

At first there was much swearing as sharks were taking his baits.

This was his second or third shark, but…

While he was performing surgery on this shark, his other rod went off.

That's better. A nice sweetie. Jaro's smiling again. Beautiful fish and conditions, eh?

Suitably impressed by this performance, baptism and I went back to the fishing with renewed optimism, completely uncalled for, as it turned out.

DaveyG turned up, having radioed us when he launched an hour or so earlier, just in time to see jaro boat a bigger sweetie.

The scene. Pic by daveyG.

doing it again a little later…

Hooked up. Pic by daveyG.

Definitely not the same fish as in the previous pic.

Banana prawns were doing the damage, rigged on a large unweighted circle hook and cast down drift to slowly descend to the waiting fish. The rest of us were using mainly soft plastics which, in Dave’s case were being sacrificed to the leatherjacket population. No fish however until…

Suddenly, not long after Dave had left to get back to work, my trailing outfit went off. The strike had sweetlip written all over it. I'd sweetened the SP with a chunk of the freshest bonito you could get and now was sure it was my turn to boat a huge sweetie, or maybe a snapper. D’oh!

Either a leatherjacket or a triggerfish, don't really know the difference. Anyway he went back.

Jaro dropped a big strike around now, when his whole dead fish bait went off and he was left with a shredded leader. Then I caught another triggerfish, same jig. Shortly after jaro ran out of bananas we decided to head home, as we had at least 5.3 km to travel and it was about 09:45.

Just after leaving we picked up with baptism who had been mucking around a little further south. Apparently he'd had an unequal encounter with something big and toothy but opted to head for the beach too, as he also had to get back to work.

On the way back, just north of the river mouth, I picked up my first mackerel of the season, an undersized school mackerel which took on the Qantas HLP, and ended up freed with a sore lip and a slight hook wound in the flank. So, three species in my new yak, first trip, but no proper keepers, for me. None for baptism either. Jaro, well, you couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

Back on the beach…

Three nice sweeties for jaro.

My new ride, faster than the old one (maybe it's just the new paddle but it does seem to have more buoyancy).

I don't know how daveyG went but possibly he'll let us know if anything of interest occurred on the way back.

Thanks for coming along guys. See you out there again soon.

Kev (sunshiner)