Seaway and Broadwater Report Tuesday 8th January 2013

Into the seaway at around 2am, swell was around 1.5m from the SE, wind was 5-10kts ESE.  Had a scout around but all was quiet so decided to do some prospecting with a 3/8thoz ecogear grass minnow on 10lb braid, not even a hit on that so decided to go a bit deeper with a 1/2 oz with the same plastic.  A few casts after I had changed I got a hit and next cast in the same area I got smashed and this thing took off like a rocket hell bent on getting to the other side of the seaway, for the next hour this thing went from one side of the seaway to the other at least 4 times and each time I followed before it decided to slug it out down deep in close to the edge of the north wall.  By this time I had pretty much ruled out every possibility but a big eagle ray or a big shark.  After redlining my 10lb tackle I finally managed to get a look at it, it was an eagle ray around 1.5m across the wings probably about 20-25kg,  I got it to the side of the boat took a couple of pics and cut the line.  Thats one big ray on light gear, one hell of a fight, hooked in the mouth too.




Needed a break after that and first light was showing so I changed over to a minnow.  worked the walls for a while, landed one 40cm tailor on a vision 111 but it was pretty quiet.  The bigeyes came up once about 100m off the front of the north wall and I landed one of those around 45cm on a twistie.  Had a look at some birds offshore but there was only tons of small bonito under them.  There was alot of boats around the pipe, I think they were catching a few bigeyes but too much hassle for me to bother with so I had a look in the broadwater, saw quite a bit of bait but no fish.  Tide wasn't real good for that anyway.  Watched some birds for a while but they weren't over fish so called it a day at around 7.15.  Knowing my luck the fish probably showed at 7.30..

Quite a few boats around still, seems to be a bit of bait around most of it near crab but it looks small around 3cm.  Haven't found any significant numbers of fish the last 3 trips, there have been alot of bigeyes around but word is they are feeding more aggressively in the early evening rather than in the morning.  Tailor numbers have dropped right off, probably have to wait until another school comes through.  For anyone who's going out there is apparently lots of striped tuna along straddie at the moment as well, just head north and look for the birds.  I did see alot of birds out there on tuesday but it was too rough to head out there in my boat.