Seaway, Broadwater and Inshore Report Friday 17th December

Conditions

• Wind: SW  5-10  knots
• Preceeding 3 Days Wind : N-NW 5–150 knots
• Barometer – 1004.8 rising to 1006.5
• Swell: 0.5m NE Swell
• Water Clarity 0.5-6m
• Tide : BOM: Low tide at 11.37 am, High tide at 05.21am  ( 0.43-1.30) Actual top of tide 06.00am
• Time Fished: 03.45am to 09.00am
• Moon Phase: 4 days before full moon.
• Water Temp 24.2-24.7 Degrees C

Notes

Sunny & overcast,  Excellent water quality at the top of the tide, visibilty up to 6 metres, alot of dirty water runoff once the tide started to run out.  More aggressive behaviour by the fish.  Some big bait schools north of the seaway just behind the break line.

Report

On the water by 3.45am, moved straight up to the north wall to fish the edges.  Din't take long before the fish got interested and in quick time I had managed 2 bigeyes at 40 & 45cm and one tailor at 45cm on a Rapala XR12.  Switched to poppers (tackle house feed popper 100) and caught one bigeye at 50cm & one tailor at 52cm.  Moved down to the pipeline and found some fish busting up, switched to 20gm twisties and was soon hooked up into some quality bigeyes.  Managed 7 from 45-57cm before they went quiet.  Moved back to the north wall and drifted along the side casting 2ogm twisties to the edges, after a couple of minutes as the lure neared the boat a big bow wave came up behind it and smashed the lure with the fish nearly getting airborne, the bright yellow tail was a dead giveaway and I was hooked up into a big yellowtail kingfish.   The line melted off the reel and the fish headed around the back of the boat and headed towards the south wall, when youre used to catching bigeyes you forget how much power a decent yellowtail king has.  There was no way I was stopping it on 6lb braid so I had to let it do its thing, with the line now looking quite depleted he shook his head and the hooks pulled, leaving me to wind in quite a bit of line.  After that I switched to plastics and fished on the bottom for a while, landed 1 jewie at 53cm but otherwise it was quiet.  Moved into the broadwater looking for active fish and found a decent school of bigeyes busting up around a beacon, caught 7 of those but the size was a bit small around 25-35cm.  Moved back down to the seaway and went offshore looking for tuna, found a few small patches of fish but they were pretty skittish.  Moved close inshore investigating some bird activity and found a mixed school of tailor, dart and longtom attacking schools of bait just behind the shore dump.  They were hungry too, from them I managed another 15 or so tailor all around 40-45cm, 3 dart from 35-36cm and a longtom at 50cm.  At around 9am I decided to call it a day.

So overall a very good day on the water, lots of active fish, lots of bait and some surprises.  With the full moon on tuesday I'd expect it to only get better.