We arrived with a couple of hours of light left, and although the sun was out, it was bloody freezing and blowing a gale:
To make matters worse, we made our way down to the flats and were greeted with this green, filamentous algae:
Has anyone else seen this down here before? Usually this is a sign of a nutrient spike in the water, so hopefully the system gets a good flush soon. Anyway, we started having a flick and started foul hooking heaps of these little shrimp:
Lots of bait = lots of fish, right? Wrong. Two hours later, the only fish that had hit the sand was this guy:
Usually when the toads are aggressive and hitting lures it generally means other fish are feeding too, but not this time. Ah well, at least Luna was enjoying herself:
And as always, the sunset was spot on:
We headed back to the car a little surprised at the lack of action, but certain we'd make up for it the next day. We were on the flats before the sun and conditions looked perfect:
We decided to fish a little drop off where the receding tide had revealed a number of flathead lies:
We started flicking surface lures around and despite seeing a few swirls and boils, we couldn’t entice a strike. Lucky the sunrise was nice because we couldn't catch a cold:
As the sun rose higher I decided to switch to a deeper diver, and it didn’t take long before I was on:
A nice bream in the low 30s – thank god! I had another solid hit a couple of casts later for no hook up, before it went quiet again. We wandered the flats for the next couple of hours covering some serious ground, when out of desperation I tied on a chubby. And couple of casts later I was on:
A nice flatty spot on 50cm. Ahh the faithful chubby, how many times have you saved me from a fishless session. By this stage it was almost high tide, and the beach we had been wandering on was now completely under water:
This meant we had to do some serious wading to get back to dry land, and we weren’t the only ones caught out by the big tide:
Poor Luna had to do a heap of swimming:
And reed-bashing:
And by the time we made it back to dry land, the poor thing was exhausted:
By this stage it was late morning and I had to be on the road by midday, so Alex decided to tie on a bent minnow in a last ditch effort to catch his first bream on surface. And almost straight away he had a hit. After his second missed hit I decided to tie on a bent too, and it didn’t take long before I was on:
A nice, healthy bream in the low 30s. And next cast, Alex's bent was absolutely crunched! This was obviously a good fish, and after a really solid fight a beautiful yellowfin around the 40cm mark popped up. Maz was absolutely stoked - not only was it his first fish on surface, it was a cracker to boot! As I was getting the camera out, Maz decided to give the bream a quick rinse in the shallows. It gave a little kick and Maz let it swim off, grabbing the line, only to watch his prize bream disappear back into the depths with the lure still in its mouth - the lure clip had come undone. Behold a broken man:
This was devastating for Maz on several levels – not only was it his first bream on surface, it would have probably beaten his PB of 39cm (we never got to measure it), it might have been his first 40, and it swam away with his favourite, custom coloured 86mm bent. Pisser ha.
Cheers!
