Seaway Report Thursday 16th March 2012

Into the broadwater at 5am I had a few things that I wanted to do today.  Firstly I wanted to try a few new locations to see if I could get herring there and secondly I wanted to test circle hooks effectiveness in increasing the hookup rate while using herring as a livie.  A standard hook through the nose usually results in a hookup rate of 50% at best depending on the day and the fish around.  Wind was 10-15kts from the south, tide was running out to a low at 10.30am.  Water temp was around 25-26 degrees.  The first couple of locations only yielded half a dozen herring but that was enough to be going on with so I headed into the seaway at dawn.  Chucked a few lures around for zip then switched to live herring, first one down got eaten by something good but the hook pulled early in the fight.  Second one down was eaten by another good fish which turned out to be a 61cm tailor hooked in the side of the mouth.  The next few I lost without hookups.  Tried lures again for a while then headed into the broadwater to look for some more herring.  Checked out a number of locations and ended up with about 20 after a couple of hours so not exactly heaps of them around.  Back to the seaway I used up all the small ones waiting for the tide to turn, picked up a couple of small jewies and a couple of bream all hooked in the mouth.. one of the good things about circle hooks is that fish are always hooked in the mouth which makes them easy to release.  Once the tide turned things picked up with some more small jewies(one of which was eaten by a shark) more bream in the 25-30cm range and the surprise of the day a 42cm Pennant Fish which is a new species for me.  Also got cut off a couple of times, probably by tailor.  Ran out of bait an hour later and called it a day.

So an interesting day, unfortunately circle hooks did not increase the hookup rate at all  so its back to the drawing board in that regard. I'll be testing a dual hook rig on my next livie fish.   Not heaps of fish landed(about 10-12) and those bream were a pain, but thats what you get for using herring as a livie.