Combined Seaway and Broadwater Report Monday 10th, Thursday 13th, Friday 14th December 2012

Monday 10th

Well got out for a fish on monday down to the seaway from 4am til 8am, swell was small around a metre from the NE, got a few small (<40cm)tailor on poppers around the north wall on dawn, plus a couple of bonito on slugs. Not much bait or fish in the seaway itself, but tons of bait holding between wavebreak and crab. Didnt see any fish into them though and no big fish on the sounder. Dad pulled a 58cm tailor and 65cm jewie on 7" gulps at the top of the tide around the north wall, lost a bigger fish too.




Thursday 13th

Strong SE winds this time of year can bring in decent schools of tailor along with a few greenback tailor which tend to hug the north seaway wall during run in tides. I was watching the wind closely and decided it would be worth a shot on Thursday.  The wind was forecast to be 20-25kts but it dropped down to a moderate 10-15kts but the swell was 2m+, big dangerous conditions.  We arrived just on dawn and pulled a few tailor up to 50cm on poppers first then chased some surface busting bigeyes around the pipeline got 5 of those all around 40cm, once they went down we went back to the wall with minnows and prospected until we found a big school of tailor sitting in close to the rocks. While it wasnt a fish a cast, every drift yielded a couple of fish and there were some big fish amongst them, best tailor went 65cm, plus we got another couple around 60 and quite a few in the mid 50's. Dad took the honours of all the big fish(again) best I managed was 55cm. We also had a shark(1.5m) hunting the hooked tailor, lost a few and landed one chomped fish. Best lure was a white rapala xr10 which dad was using, I tried many other lures but all I got were small to medium fish. Heaps of bait around seems to be mostly white pilchards around 5-8cm long, tons of bait from the seaway all the way up to northern end of sovereign.

Friday 14th

Only had a few hours to fish today so we got there just on dawn, the swell had moderated and the wall was much calmer. Pulled one tailor(45cm) on a popper then 1 bigeye casting at surface bustups around the pipe.  Pulled a couple more medium size tailor on minnows along the edge but the big school from yesterday had gone.  Went into the broadwater and spotted some sporadic surface bustups but casting into the proved fruitless until dad hooked another good fish landing a GT around 65cm.  Saw some kingies come up a few times but unsurprisingly no hits out of them.   We cast into multiple schools of GT's as well but all our casts came back without a hit.  Had to go at 6.45am.  The seaway was thick with bait as was the channel all the way up to crab island.

So what we have right now is an interesting mix of fish all feeding on the abundant schools of white pilchards, interesting that they are whites as usually the majority of bait this time of year is usually frogmouths.  Tailor, Bigeyes, GT's, Kingfish, bonito are all feeding on this ample food at the moment but you need to be in the right place at the right time to have a shot at the larger fish.  Tomorrow should fish well for GT's in the channel between Crab and wavebreak about an hour after the tide turns to run in.  Still a chance for a greenback tailor around the walls, don't ingore the inner sections of the walls either, the school we found was well inside the seaway mouth.  Kudos to dad for catching all the decent fish this week, I caught plenty but nothing over 55cm.