Seaway & Broadwater Report Friday 21st October 2011

Into the seaway at 2am, the swell was up to 2m+ and wind was still blowing at around 10 knots from the south.  Checked out a few locations but only had a few bumps so I moved back into the broadwater.  Picked up a few small bigeyes & tailor  on plastics and poppers but nothing too exciting.  First light was at 4am so I moved back into the seaway, fished the pipeline briefly for zip before moving out to the north wall.  With the swell up there were some excellent wash areas to fish and I switched to a vision 110,  on the second cast got hit by a good fish which turned out to be a 57cm Tailor.  Picked up another tailor around 40cm shortly afterwards.  Tried poppers for a while and had a few good hits that didn't connect but other than that it was quiet on all fronts. I did see one salmon caught by another angler.

I left there as I wanted to spend some time in the broadwater looking at some spots that usually hold bigeyes this time of year as well as checking out some new ones.  First spot I looked at held plenty of bigeyes and tailor and it was a fish a cast on 20gram twisties but they were all small fish between 30 & 40cm.  That lasted about 30mins before they shut down so I moved on.  Looked at a few more spots before finding another big school of bigeyes in a new location, same thing again a fish a cast for about 30 min then they shut down all small fish.  I started off with twisties but after 10 or so fish I switched lures to the new 68mm shimano waxwing, an interesting lure but the hookup rate with its standard heavy guage double hooks was shocking,  I'm going to switch to size 4 owner ST56 which should solve that problem.  It has a nice twitching action though and I'll give it a go in the seaway washes over the next couple of months, there's a bigger model which should be ideal for it.

Anyway tried a few more spots for zip then called it a day around 8.30am.  Water temp was around 21-22 degrees.  Visibility was about 5 metres near the top of the tide, about 2 metres near the bottom of the tide so very nice clean water. No weed.  No sign of the bait schools yet.  Way too rough to go offshore.