Seaway Weekly Wrap Up Friday 15th November 2013

I spent 3 days in the seaway this week, Monday Wednesday and Friday, all morning sessions. Despite the Fish Alert I put out on Wednesday the fishing still remains unpredictable.  Some day's the fish are feeding, some days they aren't.  There was significant surface feeding on Monday through to Wednesday in the strong Northerlies, not sure about Thursday but no surface feeding on Friday in the much better conditions.  Unfortunately the fish seem to be favouring windy conditions so it doesn't look good for the weekend given the forecast of light winds and no swell.  Still you never know if you never go.  Bait levels in the seaway are very high with massive schools of big Frogmouth Pilchards everywhere.




If you do see a bustup cast in there with whatever you have on the line and it should get eaten.  When the fish do decide to feed they aren't fussy.  Skitterbaits are being taken home by kings at an alarming rate, I know of 4 that have been lost over the last week to rampaging kingfish, noone has managed to land a big one on them yet.  Skitterbaits are also still being taken by Tailor around the north wall after sunup but only a few this week. The North Wall around dawn has fished very poorly due to all the dirty water from the Northerlies.  Most of the Tailor action this week was on Tuesday and Wednesday with lots of surface busting around the end of the North Wall halfway through the runout from 9am-11am.

Black Redhead Skitterbaits are out of stock at the moment but more are coming in next week.

The North Wavebreak Wall  and the Canyon was where most of the big surface action was but it was shortlived, only lasting a few minutes on Monday and about 10 minutes on Wednesday.  There was no surface action there at all on Friday.

It's tough to make any recommendations at the moment due to things changing so quickly and unpredictable behaviour.  We'd all rather be catching fish on lures but if you don't mind soaking a bait while waiting for some surface action, catch a dozen or so frogmouths on bait jigs and put some down the bottom on a single hook through the head(put it through both the top and bottom jaws to stop the mouth opening and the bait spinning).  Sink it to the bottom then lift it up a metre so that it drifts just above the bottom.  With the amount of Frogmouths around it's an effective technique and keeps you busy while waiting for something to throw your lure at.  I did this for an hour or so on Friday and managed 2 Flathead around 40cm, a Spangled Emperor around 30cm, A Jewie around 65-70cm and a couple of 30cm Bream.  It wouldn't surprise me if some other bigger fish(Kingfish, GT, Tailor) took a liking to that technique either.  Best to use decent gear as you never know what you will hook.  I was using 50lb leader and a 3/0 XX Tru Turn hook.  I might be on Channel 7 news tonight with that Jewie as Paul Burt took some footage of it.

Low water temps are still a problem with it being around 20.5 degrees on Friday.

Date	Time fished	Tides
Monday 11th November	4.00am - 9.30am	0253 1.04 0827 0.34 1504 1.35 2140 0.13
Wednesday 13th November	4.00am - 11.30am	0500 1.25 1052 0.29 1705 1.28 2318 0.06
Friday 15th November	3.30am - 10.30am	0000 0.03 0636 1.46 1244 0.20 1841 1.21