Seaway Report Friday 30th September 2011

On the water at 3am, I moved into the seaway to look for Tarpon.  With the bottom end of run in tide weed was again a problem but thankfully not as thick as the previous trip.  Casting around with a pearl ecogear grass minnow on a 3/8 oz head it wasn't long before the first Tarpon hit and promptly jumped off.  The next half hour only had a few half hearted hits but once I changed position and got a different angle I finally managed to land 2 Tarpon in the high 50's, one of them had a deformed mouth which was interesting.

Dawn arrived and I changed tack to a 1/2oz pearl 7" gulp jerk shad.  With the tide just starting to run in I dropped it to the bottom and let it drift around with only the occasional drop to keep it close to the bottom.  After a couple of drifts I felt a thud and I set the hook, the fish powered off and headed into the middle of the seaway.  After a solid 10 minute fight the fish surfaced and was promptly netted.  It was a quality mulloway of 90cm, my second biggest for the year.  A few more drifts yielded zip so I moved and changed tack again.

I moved over to the north wall flats, and switched to a 20g twistie.  First cast right to the edge of the surf and I hooked up solid on a good fish.  A big salmon that looked every bit of 70cm launched itself out other water and after a torrid fight, I had him next to the boat ready for the net, unfortunately the hooks pulled..... easy release.  The next cast yielded one more salmon at 58cm and 1 more tailor at 35cm.   No more hits there so I tried around the pipeline for zip.  With the tide in full swing I decided to move on to the next part of the plan which was livebaiting the top of the tide.  So off to get livebaits, while they weren't thick I managed 10 or so pike in a couple of hours, also caught a lancer, flathead, tailor and a whiting as bycatch.

At around 9am I moved back to the seaway but before starting  to livebait, I threw some raiders around the front end of the eddy and pulled 3 more tailor in mid 40's.  That was it so as the tide starting to slow I began livebaiting  the first few livies got cut in half and mangled.  I then landed a slew of jewies...55cm, 63cm, 58cm and  a 78cm jewie.  I did hook one good fish which made a beeline for the rockwall and buried itself in the rock, couldn't stop it on 30lb gear.  Pulled the hooks on a couple of other big fish as well.  That was it for the livies so called it a day around 11am.

So a pretty good day overall and a classic example of the variety of quality species available in the seaway.  Good to see some tailor showing up at last, could be the start of the summer run of big fish.  Also good to see the north wall flats yielding some good fish in the last few trips.  It doesn't always yield fish but its an area worth keeping an eye on.    There's plenty of bait holding just offshore so hopefully we'll see some enter the seaway soon.  If that happens the action will be thick and fast.