Hawkesbury Sat Am-sun Pm 13/07/08

[jewgaffer]

Hi Everyone.

I was invited to come along with a few of my friends by Ian (Digger) for a weekend Hawkesbury session on Digger's 43 foot 8 berth Flybridge Cruiser, an awsome boat, a complete home on the water, and well set up for fishing and coastal travel.

Digger is in the process of planning a trip from Pittwater to the WhitSundays and I must say Digger is an extremely capable skipper very experienced and educated in handling sailing boats as well as power boats and cruisers in all types of conditions.

On board were Digger's friend and decky Rick, myself and my friends Grant (Arked), George and Larry.

We were taken out by tender to Digger's mooring in Pittwater on Saturday morning and the co-ordination between Digger the skipper on the flybridge and his decky Rick in getting the big boat off the mooring and underway so quickly and efficiently was a learning experience in itself.

First off we caught over 40 slimys out of literally a wall of oversize slimy mackeral around 300-350cms.

The slimy Mackeral were holding up high around about two metres below the surface above a deep water section up from central Pittwater.

This particular live bait spot is one where Digger has had good results in the past and looks a good place to fish for baitfish, being on the outside of a line of moored boats and looks particularly good for the early part of a run in tide, particularly in the early morning and in the late afternoon when bait fish come in to the area with the tide.

We got stuck into the baitfish, kept them up high with burley which also avoids the bream, and we made sure we had a good supply of baitfish left over for the Hairtail Social Weekend. In addition to the forty odd slimys we caught, we managed to catch about a dozen yellowtail by having a couple of rods down deep at the same spot, at the time when the slimy's were active. The slimys were in abundance but the yellowtail were scarce possibly because of the massive numbers of slimy mackeral widespread around the whole area, where there should normally have been yellowtail in abundance and more than likely no slimy mackeral.

We trolled a couple of lures on the way up Pittwater and around towards F&S and then picked up Grant at Brooklyn Marina as arranged, and motored off to fish the Cowan side of Gunyah beach in a jewfish spot where I had reports of flathead being caught at the beginning of the run out around the mouth of the small alcove that surrounds the beach. We caught several undersize flathead, a couple of undersize snapper, quite a lot of rays, eels, catfish and shovel nose sharks, until Grant caught a nice flathead which measured 77 cms on the Fishraider mat.

The pic below is of Grant (Arked) with his 77cm flathead.

Shortly afterwards George caught a snapper and threw it on the barbecue with a couple of tasty shovel nose fillets and added a couple of big slimy fillets to his part of the barbecued dinner as well. The barbecue dinner was comprised of fish and lamb chops for everybody and nicely cooked up by Digger.

George had a run from a toothy shark or a big pike eel it seemed as this fish bit straight thru his 80lb leader after a only a short tussle and the drag doing the job well. As it was getting close to dark, we moved off as planned and anchored in close near Wobby where 45 feet drops into 60 odd feet to fish the last half of the run out until the boat started to turn.

At Wobby we only caught rays, more shovel nose sharks and the usual plethora of eels and catfish at night, and had several heavy rod bending bites where the rod tips didn't flick straight back back like they do with eels, but we had no run after that series of hard rod bending bites and no hook ups with whatever fish were biting hard like that. There was no sign of jew or anything else half decent, although the early action on rubbish species was reasonably fast.

We were planning to move on from Wobby at 1am to fish the bridge side of a reef for the whole of the run in tide till daybreak, but we decided to stay on at Wobby rather than move the big boat. From midnight till morning it turned extremely cold and we never lost another bait which was not surprising on a run in tide on the Wobby side, as the long run along the Long Island side of Danger Island towards the bridge has good reefs and Wobby has great depth and a sunken boat and the Wobby area fishes best on a run out tide with a slow to medium current build up.

Digger cooked up a nice breakfast of sausages, bacon, onions and eggs on the barbecue, and we moved back near the mouth as planned and caught several big rays and yet more shovel nose sharks which gave us a several shortlived thrills and rod bending action on several occasions.

We had good action overall, and even though we caught a number of rays and shovel nose sharks which are compatiable with jewfish, the presence of these particular shark species in a number of locations and their vigorous feeding activity alone, is a very good sign of further improvement in the Hawkesbury, where fishing can only be described as poor for quite some time

We burleyed in the still water and attracted about thirty birds including gulls and sea hawkes and a solitary pelican sat on the water behind the frenzied gulls and four swooping sea hawks, waiting for his share.

Birds are around when predator fish are active, and the same works vice versa - predators come in for a look when birds are around and actively feeding, and our burley attracted plenty of birds, and the poor old pelican waited around on a Sunday for next to nothing lol

Unfortunately, although we encouraged hot bird action by using surface burley so as to attract useful predator fish, the birds in frenzy only attracted the scavengers, the rays and the sharks within the time we had left to wait for our jewfish to make their run in to the river mouth.

The bird action in the burley could be seen in the sky above and the water was bursting with activity from birds swooping down onto the burley above our jewfish baits. We expected other boats to come in at high speed, but there were no other boats anywhere near the birds, to give us a good laugh for creating a false scenario of birds in frenzy by encouraging them with burley.

The water along the sandy run half way between Lion Island and Juno where we got fast ray and shovel nose action looked very promising for the jewfish to come in during the second half of the run in tide but we planned to finish our session at midday.

That part of the mouth and the up river side of Flint and Steel, out in the sandy section upriver just away from where the reef ends, either to the left and just wide of the reef or on the right hand side of the reef towards the shore on the Cowan side, as does the Pacific Point area where we were, can also fish very well during the day in the run in tide, and fishing on until an hour or two after the top of the tide stillwater, after re-positioning where the sandy section meets the reef on the Broken Bay side of F&S.

My friends and I would like to thank Digger for his friendliness and hospitality

and Rick we thoroughly enjoyed your company and like your friend Digger, you are a top bloke as well.

I hope we all do well on both jew and hairtail on the hairtail weekend.

Cheers

jewgaffer

I will post a mixture of pics later as I am now having trouble resizing pics which I don't usually have.

When I've already resized my pics once, can I make them smaller again to get them all on the one post ? , at the moment I can't even get one of the others on a post ??

Edited July 15, 2008 by jewgaffer

[flatty hunter626]

nice work jewgaffer a bloody nice flatty at any rate!.......shovel nose shark fillets are pretty tasty as well...(did u taste them).?

cheers flatty hunter

[slinkymalinky]

Nice report Byron. That's a honker flatty that Grant's holding. Interesting to read each report since I went out with you... each time the boat seems a little bigger and a little more comfortable. Another couple of trips and we'll probably see the Queen Mary up in the Hawkesbury (you might need a net with a longer handle!).

Hope you've got you're winter woolies ready for the hairtail night. Where abouts (in general) are you likely to be fishing and on what boat... I'll wander over and say hi if I can find you in the dark.

Cheers, Slinky

[marcel haber]

Not a bad effort Byron and Crew.

Great to hear you had an enjoyable weekend, pity the target species did not turn up.

I thought by this time of year the Hawkesbury would be infested with them.

Any day out on the water beats staying at home.

Keep in touch,

Twin 1

Marcel

[Ray R]

WOW JG that was some read, sounds like a beauty of a vessel with all the luxuries on board for you old blokes. HE HE HE HE, stacks of bait too.. Cheers Mate...

[Dreamtime]

Crikey! - did you guys go out fishing or go out for dinner?

Sounds like you stayed at the local Bed & Breakfast - bacon, eggs, sausages - what more?

I think the added burley from the boats' head probably brought on the rubbish fish.

What would you put it down to Grant?

Too cold maybe?

[warnie]

Bryon..

A shame that a jewfish didn't turn up to the party.

but by the sounds of things a most enjoyable time

spent on the water with mates all the same..

just a prelude to the hairtail night were hopefully the fishing will turn around

for you .....and you end up braining them....

Cheers Warnie...

[jewieslayer]

good report a same no head shakes

[arkedup]

Crikey! - did you guys go out fishing or go out for dinner?

Sounds like you stayed at the local Bed & Breakfast - bacon, eggs, sausages - what more?

I think the added burley from the boats' head probably brought on the rubbish fish.

What would you put it down to Grant?

Too cold maybe?

Hi Mariner,

mate it was better than some of the bed and breakfasts I have stayed in with all the comforts of home. Byron neglected to mention the ## odd beers the boys put down over the trip.

The head definatly added to the burley trail whether it helped or hindered us I couldn`t say. The eels catfish rays and sharks are the usual critters that are pulled up on a night fish in the Hawkesbury and every now and then there is a jew in amongst them unfortunatly it wasnt to be on the weekend.

The great company , commeradery and laughs that comes with 6 blokes on a boat more than made up for the lack of jew

The night although cold was suprisingly warmer than I had expected ,the cloud cover and only a slight breeze helped to keep the temp up a bit

The only bad part of the trip was being the last to bed and trying to get to sleep with sound of 5 blokes snoring

A big THANK YOU to Ian for a great trip

Arked

[aussie big bob]

Byron

enjoy reading your post. It was a better choice than the paper over breakie.

cheers

bob

[arpie]

Well done Byron & Boys - sounds like a fun couple of days. Shame the big ones didn't come out to play, but still a good assortment of fish. Sounds like the crew were well fed too!

Cheerio

ROberta