Seaway Report Wednesday 26th October 2011

Into the seaway at 1.30am with the bottom of the runout tide the water was fairly dirty with a 1m swell and there was a 10kt Southerly breeze.  Tried a few locations but not even a bump so moved back into the broadwater caught 1 small bigeye on a popper.  Moved back into the seaway around 3am for the run in tide tried again in a variety of locations but still not even a bump.

Anyway while I was scooting about I noticed some garfish on the surface near the north wall, quite a few of them so I decided to do some trolling incase there was something hunting them.  A couple of minutes into the troll run the XR10 got smashed and it took off at warp speed heading out to sea, he then changed directions heading towards the south wall so I followed him over, then he ran back to the north wall side and I followed, then back to the south side again.  By this time we were getting dangerously close to the pipeline and it was still hanging close to the bottom. I knew I had to go hard on him or lose him as he swam under the pipe so I redlined the tackle using my finger to lock up the spool on the lift, careful to release if he made a run.   Whatever it was was big and heavy and didn't appreciate being lifted, I managed to get him over the pipeline though and he took off heading towards wavebreak.  Down near wavereak I got my first look at him as he came close to the surface, a big eagle ray.  From there he stubbornly sat under the boat with me gaining a little bit of line and him taking short runs for the next half hour.  We we neared Crab Island and the water got shallow I finally managed to get him close to the boat and unhook him, he was hooked in the mouth as well.  He was a big fella, wingspan was well over a meter, probably close to 1.5m  Anyway I sent him on his way and headed back to the seaway.

Dawn was well advanced by this stage so I switched to shallow running minnows with the zipbaits system minnow 15f the first choice.  That was smashed a couple of casts later and yielded a nice tailor at 59cm.  Over the next hour I landed 10 more tailor  half were 54cm and over, the rest were around 30cm.  I alternated lures between the 15f, vision 110 and 20g twisties.

They went off the bite there so I tried the pipeline for zip had a look down at wavebreak just incase.  Nothing there so I headed offshore to get some livies, managed some nice yellowtail and slimies.  Back at the seaway I livebaited for a while and pulled in a nice jewie at 82cm, then followed it up with 2 more small jewies at 40cm & 65cm.   That was pretty much it for me, a couple more hits but nothing solid.  There were quite a few small jewies landed but I didn't see any more big ones, a couple of decent tailor landed buy other boats though.

So an interesting morning, the wee small hours are yielding little as the Tarpon seem to have moved upstream into the rivers.  I'll give it one more shot then I will probably only fish from predawn(3.30) until summer is over.  The summer tailor season is now well underway and the seaway should fish well for them until the end of december, should be a few bigger fish around as well.  Hopefully we'll see some bigger popper munching tailor as we get close towards december.  No sign of the bait yet, water temps were 21 degrees in the seaway, up to 25 degrees in the broadwater.