Seaway Combined Report Tuesday/Wednesday 13th/14th December 2011

A bit busy at the moment with work so I'll just be putting up quick reports for a while.  Fished Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

Tuesday I went out with Wade and we caught a few small bigeyes and tailor around the north wall on first light, moved offshore to look for tuna.  Found some small frigates and bonito down around burleigh and palm beach reef.  Really fussy but we managed a few on 7 gram sea rocks and 5 gram gold twisties.  No big stuff around.  Came back to the broadwater and caught more tailor and bigeyes.  Nothing big, all under 45cm.  Nice weather though.

Wednesday I went out in the afternoon from 4pm.  With the wind at a fresh 20-25kts from the south east the broadwater was lumpy in places and fishing was a challenge. Had a look in the broadwater first but the constant wakes of the cruisers and jet boats were making it difficult to fish. So I moved out to the seaway, at the bottom of the runout tide it was extra lumpy in the seaway itself but quite fishable around the front and to the north of the north wall. First few casts yielded a couple of tailor but that was all. A few fish were feeding sporadically on the surface I think they were small frigates, never did hook one though. There was tons of bait and fish arches on the sounder and I thought the fish might start feeding as the sun went down so we waited.
Right as the sky began to darken I hooked a fish on a slug, a short but spirited fight and I had him near the boat when all of a sudden he took off and suddenly had alot of weight to it. A few angry headshakes later and I wound in half a bigeye trevally, the bullsharks of the north wall strike again! About 10 minutes later the place went berserk with bigeyes chopping the surface all around us, we hooked a couple of good fish both of which were lost through the hooks pulling. Then about 5 minutes after we they started they shut down. We had a couple more strikes on poppers but no more hookups.. disappointing they did not feed for very long. As darkness fell we moved into the broadwater trolled a bit, cast around a few locations, got one bigeye on a popper and as the wind and rain increased decided to call it a night. Not exactly a stellar trip but an interesting one nonetheless.

From what I can tell it looks like the big Tailor have moved on, there's plenty still around in the 30-45cm bracket but the last couple of weeks has seen no big fish.  There's probably a few straggler's still around, this coming week might yield a couple of decent fish with the morning run in tides from Tuesday onwards.