Conditions
Notes
Neglible tidal flow. High Phosphorescence levels in the Seaway. Low visbility levels.
Report
Today I wanted to spend some time looking at some new locations so I got on the water a bit earlier than usual and moved to spot 1. As soon as I got there I saw a couple of active fish so I picked the biggest one and cast to it with a ZBL popper. Even though it was a bad cast and fell about 5 metres short, he was onto it after the first pop and he smashed it hard. It was a dogged fight close to structure which had me thinking jack, but it turned out to be a 53cm Tailor, pretty good fish for the first cast. Next fish I cast at looked smaller and he had quite a few goes at it but he did not hookup. I persisted for a little while with a few other lures but caught nothing else, there was a bit of phosphorescence in the water but it wasn't too bad. I moved onto spot 2, this location had lots of small tailor feeding on the surface and they were quite happy to hit the popper but hookups were rare, I did land 2 more tailor around the 40cm mark.
By this time it was the top of the tide and I moved into the seaway to scout some locations during the runout tide. The phosphorescence levels in the seaway were insane, my line was clearly visible at all times, almost like a vivid neon arrow saying 'This fish has strings attached so dont eat it' I persisted anyway. I tried a number of techniques and found some great fish holding locations with plenty of fish on the sounder but nothing was interested in my vivid neon lightshow.
Dawn arrived and I switched to poppers and soon caught one bigeye around 35cm, had a few more hits which didn't hookup. Not much else around so I moved offshore and had a look at a couple of inshore locations. First up was the narrowneck arti, but there was nothing there. I moved on to the scottish prince. There were tons of fish on the sounder there but all I could tempt was one small tailor. By this time it was 7am and I had run out of time so I called it a day. One of my worst trips for a while but with a small tide and high phosphorescence levels its not really surprising. Was a nice day out there though.
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