Seaway Report Wednesday 12th October 2011

Moved into the seaway at 1.30am, the moon was up but the swell was way down and there was a light SW wind.  I had a quick flick around to see if any tarpon were around but I had other plans in mind for the wee small hours.  I left the seaway and headed into the broadwater, I wanted to find some pike before sunup and spent a couple of hours checking out any likely holding locations: Bridges, jetties, marina's and beacons.  Most locations were barren and the bottom of the runout tide did not help but I did find a decent school of pike in one area and managed 3 before they shut down, the only trouble was that they were huge, around 45cm long.  Big pike are not as effective as the smaller models as livies as they are only taken by very big fish, the ideal size is around 30cm.

Anyway once I had them I moved back into the seaway and tried again for tarpon but only managed a couple of half-hearted hits.  Dawn was arriving so I setup the livebait rod and sent down one of the pike, the runin tide had well and truly started by now and the strong tidal flow made it impossible to fish such a large livie even with a 5oz sinker.  I gave that away and started off with lures, it was pretty quiet around the north wall with only 1 tailor to show for it, though I did get a few decent hits working the edges with shallow running minnows.  Another angler managed a nice little kingfish.

I moved down to the pipeline and sunk a twistie down along it.  By the time I tightened up I had a decent fish on which turned out to be a 57cm GT.  Next drop the twistie was smashed a couple of turns into the retrieve and the fish powered off, a much bigger fish than the GT it called all the shots and despite my best efforts I couldn't keep it away from the pipeline on 6lb braid and soon enough I feel the line grating over the pipe and the line busted.  Tried a few other spots but it was quiet so I moved offshore to get some livies for the top of the tide at around 8am.

The forecast for the morning was light to variable 5-10kts which was dead wrong as the wind was blowing strongly from the south at around 15knots.  As a result it took about 20 minutes to get to the bait ground pounding through the chop.  Once there I managed a nice mix of slimies and yellowtail, some of the slimies were huge, nearly 30cm long.  I headed back to the seaway slowly and began livebaiting with slimies.  Straight away the tailor were chopping them to pieces and I landed 4 Tailor in a row all between 45 and 55cm.   Unfortunately that was it, after the tide began to slow the livies were ignored and most of them died on the hook.  Surprising that I didn't catch any jewies even small ones but thats fishing for you.  I did see a nice cod and a small jewie landed on a 7inch gulp by another angler.  Tried a few other places but nothing was interested so I gave it away at around 9.30.

Not exactly a stellar result but the pike spot I found should prove handy for first light livebaiting on the right tides.  The weed has almost gone now with only a few small bits at the bottom of the tide.  There are quite a few schools of small kingfish in the seaway at the moment, could be a return to the awesome 2007 summer season where there were hundreds of kingfish that held in the seaway for a couple of months. Lets hope so.   The frogmouth pilchard schools should show up between now and the end of november, when that happens prepare for some action packed sportsfishing.