Batemans Bay - Moruya Heads 1-4 November

[Benzeenees]

Headed down to Surf Beach for a few days fishing with John and Jordy (who had to leave Wednesday evening). For the past year we've mostly put the boat (topender 490) in at Mossy Point and headed down to Moruya Heads. Which is what we did each day on this trip. The reefs and sand areas off Moruya Heads, extending down to Congo Point are quite complex giving lots of options for fishing. Heading out we encountered a huge number of mutton birds going berserck. In amongst them were small fish, seals, porposes with gannets dropping out of the sky. We tried trolling around the mass but to no avail. So we left them to it. On previous trips, as recently as 10 days earlier, the flathead - big tigers and bluespots - were on fire in about 50 - 55m of water straight off the heads. We did get a few but the tigers were smaller than they had been earlier. I caught a large gurnard on the first drop but that was it as far as gurnards were concerned. We then went out to a reef in 60 - 70m of water and picked up a few small, but nice, snapper and morwongs. Then we just started to get small ocean perch - like an orange banded rock cod - we call them orange nasties! So off to another flathead spot off Congo in about 40m of water. Now we started to get big bluespot flathead including one monster of nearly 60cm. As we drifted north we crossed into a patch of reef and collected 3 more snapper and a mowie.

Our tally for the day was 33 flathead, 1 gurnard, 1 pigfish, 6 snapper and 5 morwongs. That's between 3 fishers, but not bad!

The next 3 days were similar, but we didn't target the flathead to the same extent - you only need so many big flathead. On Friday John caught the fish of the trip - a nice 1.5kg snapper which made a marvellous meal for my wife Jacqui, John and I.

On Thursday John and I encountered another mass of mutton birds in a feeding frenzy. This time we decided to cast into the mass. We caught 1 slimey mackerel and 2 mutton birds (not hooked, just tangled and release unharmed). John put the slimey on a hook and dropped him down. Next thing, line started heading east at a million mile an hour. A short fight resulted in a broken line.

On Friday as we headed back to Mossy we came across a huge school of pilchards - millions of them - being harassed by birds, porpoises, seals and sharks. At one stage a humpback even got in on the act surfacing about 50m from us. Time to go home! Before that we caught a few pilchards on John's sabiki rod and my live bait handline. I even dipped the landing net in to see if I could catch some - but I gave that up when a 2m bronze whaler decided to investigate! I did find out what was causing the excitement - krill - tiny little prawn things in their zillions! And something big smashed into the side of the boat - probably a porpoise, seal or shark. No damage.

So if anyone's heading for the Batemans Bay area, consider going south for some real action. There have even been reports of kings up to 1m.

The water temperature started in the high 18s and ended up at 19.4C on Friday.

Edited November 5, 2011 by Benzeenees

[tide'n'knots]

wow what excitment! it must have been awesome with all that action happening so close to the boat.

great report mate.

pete.

[Benzeenees]

You're so right. You can't buy an experience like being in the middle of all those birds, sharks, seals and porpoises. It was amazing - and we ended up experiencing it 3 times in 4 days!

[ddaniel]

good going mate, i just got back from eden the boys workn down their report the water on the shelf at 21 but no blue water in close yet,still 14-15 no slimies in the harbour, reports of a few blues off the cape and plenty of flatties mainly tiges like you described.