Seaway Quickie Tuesday 2nd November 2010

Conditions

• Wind: NW 5-10  knots
• Swell: 1 m ESE Swell
• Water Clarity 1-1.5 m
• Tide : BOM: Low tide at 10.27am, High tide at 4.45am  ( 0.27-1.17) Actual top of tide 5.45am
• Time Fished: 04.00am to 05.45am
• Moon Phase: 4 Days before new moon.
• Temps 21-23 Degrees C

Notes

Small amount of suspended  weed, Water dark green colour around the north wall.  Sunny.

Report

On the water at 4am this was a trip specifically to fish the top hour of the tide and to spend some time prospecting the washes for big tailor.  As we are now in November the peak time for greenbacks in the seaway is upon us and we should see more big fish come in until we hit January.  My best so far is 71cm, so a 75cm tailor would be great.  For big tailor I'm testing the Zipbaits System Minnow 15f, so far its caught a nice tarpon and a decent 50cm tailor but no big fish. It didn't take long to get the first hookup and soon after the fish jumped out of the water a good sign of a quality fish as the smaller ones just tend to mess around close to the boat.   The fight was a tough one with alot of difficulty getting him into the net, in the end the free swimming hooks fouled on the outer edge of the net and I ended up getting my hand under the fish and lifting him in.  That fish went 63cm which is a very nice fish on a lure.  Soon after that dad caught a 40cm tailor on a 120mm feed popper.  Lots more casting followed with a few more hits but no hookups.  I changed to a zipvib 90 and began working the current lines and hooked another tailor at around 50cm.

The tide was slowing by this time and the sun was up so we switched to large gulps to target a jew or 2, that didn't take long with a double hookup on the first drop.  One fish went 65cm the other 60cm.  We pulled another 2 fish shortly after that both under 60cm.  I changed to a Berkley Power Shrimp sent it down and soon hooked a nice jewie around 65cm but the hook pulled close to the boat, I'm thinking with such a large hook I might have to set the hook a bit firmer than ordinary plastics.

By this time it was 5.45 and our time was up so we headed back to the ramp.

The water still isn't clean enough for good popper fishing, need some more strong southerlies for that.  However I did see some interesting schools of fish moving through on the sounder, so the fish may be there just need the right conditions.