Revenge..?

A few of you may remember my last trip to the bass coast where I got my ass thoroughly handed to me by some dirty big perch (for those interested, see 'Perch: 1, Pat: 0'). A year later I still hadn’t gone back, so on Sunday afternoon I decided it was time to whip the rods out for the first time in over a month and get some well overdue revenge. This time I brought some reinforcements with me in the form of my old man and two friends; one of which - Lara -  had never fished in her life. And of course my number 1, Luna:



We arrived at the creek around 4pm Sunday afternoon and the tide was dead low, meaning the majority of the creek was only 1-2ft deep:



After a few half-hearted flicks I made the call to head straight to the lair of the beast - a large pool that is more than twice the depth of the rest of the creek and filled with large, permanently submerged snags:



This is where I’d had all the action (and heartbreak) on the last trip, and I was hoping the monster perch were still hanging around. But the main goal of this trip wasn’t to exact revenge on my old nemesis, it was to get my old man his first EP on a lure and my friend Lara her first fish on an artificial. So when my dad yelled out “I’m on!” before I’d even tied a lure on, I was pretty bloody stoked:



A nice little perch around the 30cm mark, and my dad’s first on a lure. Nice! And while I was dicking around trying to take a photo, I heard my mate yell out that he was on too:




Another nice perch, this one in the mid 30s. You bloody beauty! I chucked out a cast in a similar area and on the first twitch it was slammed. Lara turned to me and said “I thought you said these guys were hard to catch?” and sure enough, just as the words left her mouth, the fish buried me in a snag. I waited patiently for it to swim out but when it didn’t budge, I decided to get closer to the water to improve the angle on it - bad move:



I was stuck, and I was having vivid flashbacks of my previous trip to this spot. By the time I managed to scramble out of the mud the fish was gone - goddamit Lara, don't tempt fate! After this the fish completely shut down (which often happens in these small pools) so I decided to do some exploring downstream, and found another large pool:



Unfortunately this one was shallow, snagless, and distinctly less fishy than the previous pool, and when the only touch I had turned out to be this miniscule galaxid:



I decided it was time to head back. On the way I ran into Lara who had managed to get herself into quite the pickle:



Welcome to the joys of landbased perch fishing ha! We dragged ourselves out of the mud and after some bush bashing:



We made our way back to the original pool. My old man and mate hadn’t had another touch, so I made the executive decision to head to a larger river a bit further down the coast (I’m sure many will recognize it):



I started making my way to my favourite spot under the bridge and found that someone had already beaten us to it – fishing pals Alex and Niroj. After a quick chat we started flicking around various hards, and third cast I was on to a little perch:



And two casts later, I had another:



After I dropped a third in as many casts I called out to the rest of the gang, and in no time space under the bridge was at a premium:



The boys were landing a steady stream of perch ranging from 20-35cm:




Particularly Maz and Basti who were pulling out one after the other from this snag:



But Lara just couldn’t keep the hooks in a fish, and after her second dropped fish she’d had enough:



And when the sun started to drop:



And I landed a toadie by the ass:



I decided I’d had enough too, so we left the fish biting. It had been a killer afternoon and although Lara didn’t catch her first fish on a lure and my perch nemesis outsmarted me once again, my dad managed to tick another species off the artificial list, and we’d all had an absolute ripper.

Cheers!