Pittwater Sunday - Pb Flattie

[MikeyR]

Patonga - Started out with a Saturday morning with weather that was blowing the place inside out, so my mate Chris and I decided to install a live bait tank on the Quinnie and see if things get better, round 11am it seemed to have blown itself out, so we headed out, after all the wind the water was flat!!. A tour of Cowan Creek for bait, headed out to Juno and a few assoretd locations. Plentiful small tailor and occassional keeper, but we sent most home and kept Yellowtails and a couple of Tailor for strip bait.

Got a couple of bites, an Occy that was way too big to be bothered wrestling although gave us a lot of laughs as we tried to chuck it back and it walked down the side of the boat. Bigger tailor (I suspect) doing fast damage to our yellowtails. So Saturday .... nada

Sunday rolls around and it's still, not a breath of wind, but overcast, so we think excellent , until that is we chuck the boat in! Theres swell in the bay on the ramp, not a good sign at all!!! and by the time we get to Lion's Is. we are thinking this is going to be a very "green day". We loiter out in the mess, on the BJ side and watch all the other boats depart! Clearly not good! We get a few bites but nothing worthwhile. We move and do a few drifts off the Island on the Umina side. Nada until we hit this one spot, within 5 minutes we have 2 keeper bream, some chuck back cods, a Bonito which I drop as a swell hits us and then as we are repositioning Chris chucks a lure out and picks up a nice tailor. But then ....nothing!

Chris picked up this Red Scorpioncod, which we decided was too ugly to be real. My fish book later helped us identify it and find out it's good eating!! I think you would need help to do that

So we head across to Flint and Steel and while we are sorting our gear, i chuck out a handline and pick up a few tailor small fry which go back and amongst them some handy yellowtail.

One goes over the side as a live bait and we start chucking lures, sp's and damn near dynamite to get a result. Chris is annoying small Tailor with his new popper, funny to watch them jump all over the show.

Nothing takes the SP but bingo one takes a prawn bait ...nice 45 cm flattie

Then an eel ... oh well

Then my livie has a run, goes quiet and then goes off! Not getting too overexcited as my previous weekends results got me the "sharkman" title!

Nice bit of weight and head shakes......could be a flattie but too heavy ??

Then this pops up ..... from et hfront of the boat Chris goes "is it a Wobbie?" My casual reply well i remember it that way..."Nah mate, just a flattie"

At a genuine 80cm she went back ..... my best ever flattie and was good to let her go.

We then headed back to Patonga and got the tinnie out for a creek cruise

Chris picked up a flounder and flattie all on SP.

So our species count for the 2 days was 2 types of cod, flounder, flatties, tailor, wrasse, eel, a monster occy, yellowtail. And we dropped a bonnie coming over the side!

We keep 6 fish flatties and bream, enough for a couple of meals after boating more than 10 flatties on Sunday alone!

Awesome weekend with interesting weather!

Mike

[autocad]

Patonga - Started out with a Saturday morning with weather that was blowing the place inside out, so my mate Chris and I decided to install a live bait tank on the Quinnie and see if things get better, round 11am it seemed to have blown itself out, so we headed out, after all the wind the water was flat!!. A tour of Cowan Creek for bait, headed out to Juno and a few assoretd locations. Plentiful small tailor and occassional keeper, but we sent most home and kept Yellowtails and a couple of Tailor for strip bait.

Got a couple of bites, an Occy that was way too big to be bothered wrestling although gave us a lot of laughs as we tried to chuck it back and it walked down the side of the boat. Bigger tailor (I suspect) doing fast damage to our yellowtails. So Saturday .... nada

Sunday rolls around and it's still, not a breath of wind, but overcast, so we think excellent , until that is we chuck the boat in! Theres swell in the bay on the ramp, not a good sign at all!!! and by the time we get to Lion's Is. we are thinking this is going to be a very "green day". We loiter out in the mess, on the BJ side and watch all the other boats depart! Clearly not good! We get a few bites but nothing worthwhile. We move and do a few drifts off the Island on the Umina side. Nada until we hit this one spot, within 5 minutes we have 2 keeper bream, some chuck back cods, a Bonito which I drop as a swell hits us and then as we are repositioning Chris chucks a lure out and picks up a nice tailor. But then ....nothing!

Chris picked up this Red Scorpioncod, which we decided was too ugly to be real. My fish book later helped us identify it and find out it's good eating!! I think you would need help to do that

So we head across to Flint and Steel and while we are sorting our gear, i chuck out a handline and pick up a few tailor small fry which go back and amongst them some handy yellowtail.

One goes over the side as a live bait and we start chucking lures, sp's and damn near dynamite to get a result. Chris is annoying small Tailor with his new popper, funny to watch them jump all over the show.

Nothing takes the SP but bingo one takes a prawn bait ...nice 45 cm flattie

Then an eel ... oh well

Then my livie has a run, goes quiet and then goes off! Not getting too overexcited as my previous weekends results got me the "sharkman" title!

Nice bit of weight and head shakes......could be a flattie but too heavy ??

Then this pops up ..... from et hfront of the boat Chris goes "is it a Wobbie?" My casual reply well i remember it that way..."Nah mate, just a flattie"

At a genuine 80cm she went back ..... my best ever flattie and was good to let her go.

We then headed back to Patonga and got the tinnie out for a creek cruise

Chris picked up a flounder and flattie all on SP.

So our species count for the 2 days was 2 types of cod, flounder, flatties, tailor, wrasse, eel, a monster occy, yellowtail. And we dropped a bonnie coming over the side!

We keep 6 fish flatties and bream, enough for a couple of meals after boating more than 10 flatties on Sunday alone!

Awesome weekend with interesting weather!

Mike

nice catch there. the live yellowtail does it again. I sometimes forget how good a bait the live yakka is!!

cheers Autocad

[framedtrash]

that red fish looks like a sargent baker too me

and they aint good eating there full of bones

[Captin]

Great report.

Top lizard also.

Well done.