East coast take 2

A couple of weekends ago I went back to my new favourite east-coast estuary with my man Cam and had a killer time - here’s what we got up to:

We left Melbourne in the early hours of Saturday morning and were on the flats a bit after lunch time:



It was a perfect day and the system was full of life:



You know it’s going to be a good day when you can’t retrieve your lure without jagging some kind of bait:




And it didn’t take before my laydown was whacked:



A nice chunky trev – not a bad way to open up the account.  I followed this up with a little tailor:



And a nice flatty:



Before Cam got the ball rolling with a nice flatty of his own:



Over the next couple of hours we landed a steady stream of flatties, trevs and tailor, but it wasn’t until I changed to a chubby that we landed our first bream:



A healthy little black – nice. We slowly made our way to the mouth of the system where we were hoping to snag a couple of whiting on the shallow flats:



First cast into the crystal clear water we watched a school of nice whiting fight over my cranka minnow, before the hooks finally stuck in one:



Cam followed this up with a beauty of his own:



We quickly swapped our shallows minnows for surface lures, and in amongst the ravenous little bream and salmon:




We landed a heap of nice ‘ting:




Even the little fellas weren’t scared of smacking a surface lure:




As the sun started to drop:




We reluctantly tore ourselves away from the whiting and made our way back to my favourite little hole for the last of the light:



First cast Cam nailed another nice flatty:



I followed this up with a trev that was looking a little worse for wear:



But the tailor soon made their presence felt:



And after one too many lost lures, we decided to head in and set up camp. The next morning we were back on the flats before the sun, and were greeted with a very ominous sky:



The tailor were absolutely ravenous, busting up everywhere:



But a few other fish managed to find our lures too:





Cam tied on a kietech and started catching everything, including pinkies:



Trevs:



A very cool flounder:



And the biggest tommy rough I’ve ever seen:



The flathead were absolutely everywhere:



With a couple of bream thrown in for good measure (even though some weren’t much bigger than the lure):




Mixed-species double hook-ups were common:



But it wasn’t until mid morning that I finally hooked into a really big fish. This thing had some serious weight and I was having visions of a monster, metre + flattie, but when it went on its first big run my 4lb leader wore through – dang. By this stage the old saying ‘red sky in the morning, sailors take warning’ had proved to be true, so we decided to call it quits before the wind and cold became any more unbearable. Thanks Cam – I had a ripper.

Cheers!