Seaway Report Friday 29th July 2011

• Water Temps 18-19 degrees
• Winds 10-15kts South
• Swell 1m SE
• Low tide at 3.00am, high tide at 8.00am (actual)

We moved into the seaway at 1.00am, conditions were challenging with a lumpy swell and a annoying southerly wind. We spent the next 2 hours checking out all likely locations with a variety of methods, minnows, plastics deep and shallow, poppers but didn't even get a hit.  It was frustrating because according to the sounder the fish were stacked in there from top to bottom.  We waited until the tide had turned then returned to one of the spots we tried earlier, first cast and I hooked a good Tarpon that jumped off.  Then nothing...... we moved to a new spot tried there for 15 minutes for zip then moved back to where I hooked the Tarpon.  Dad hooked the next Tarpon and landed a good fish around 60cm and then nothing... We moved again and tried another spot for another 20 minutes or so then returned back to where we got the fish earlier.  Thankfully this time, they were feeding properly and over the next 2 hours hooked around 30 Tarpon and landed 10, best fish went 65cm, average was around 60cm.  The Tarpon weren't hitting on every cast but consistently enough to make for some top fishing.  We were both using a clip on 30cm 50lb leader and didn't need to change the leader once so I'm going to stick with that rig for Tarpon fishing from now on, beats having to retie leaders every 2 or 3 fish due to wear.

Anyway they went off the bite when dawn arrived so we fished around the north wall for a while, had a few hits on minnows and plastics but nothing that stayed attached.  We moved down to the pipeline and spotted some birds diving on feeding fish.  First cast with a pearl slider and I hooked up on a nice GT around 50cm but the fish didn't resurface after I had landed him. We moved and found some small tailor feeding on surface, got one of those and missed a couple of others.  Back to the pipeline and we found some more fish feeding, they were moving fast though and soon disappeared.  We moved back down towards wavebreak and found some more fish feeding and they looked big, first cast with a gillies 25gram baitfish and we both got smashed, the hooks pulled on both fish shortly after though.  Next cast my lure made it almost back to the boat before it was smashed by a big yellowtail kingfish right on the surface no more than 3 metres away from the boat, he took of at a million miles an hour but the hooks pulled again shortly after..aaagh!@!!!!

They disappeared for a while then we saw some more feeding fish in close to south straddie so we went over there and chased them for a while unsuccessfully and it wasn't until I moved in front of the school and they popped up about 5 metres away that I finally hooked a fish on a pearl slider on a 1/2 oz jighead.  It screamed off in one almighty run that soon had me looking at the bottom half of the spool so I had no choice but to chase it, about 15 minutes later I had a big mack tuna circling the boat.  That fish went 85cm and on 6lb braid was one hell of a fight.  Very unusual to see big Mack tuna in the seaway, especially in the middle of winter. I've caught smaller ones around the kilo mark in there but nothing anywhere near that big.  Anyway by the time that fish had been landed the tide had turned and there was no more action.  We spent a bit of time looking for salmon but saw nothing so we called it a day at 9am.

So a pretty good morning's fishing, with lots of surface feeding by big predators.  Should fish just as well tomorrow if not better with an extended run in time.