Botany Bay Bread’n’butter 21.04.2012

[Keflapod]

Us Greeks, we like to complain about stuff.

..and when there's nothing to complain about, we complain about the fact there's nothing to complain about.

And this weekend we just had, well, it was no exception.

We complained about stuff.

I had worked out my itinerary on Friday afternoon for my assault the next morning.

First I was gonna try the water wide off the novotel, then off the third runway.

After that I was gonna go to the oil wharf for the first of the runout - see if any trevs or any bream were there. Then to the Towra shallows and Quibray bay areas.

I knew the water would be dirty from the recent floods of biblical proportions we just had. So I went to bed early after having prepared everything so I can get up early to catch the last of the run in tide. I figured this would be the cleanest water of the tide cycle and maybe have more fish in it.

At about 11:00pm I woke to the muffled sound of my wife watching TV.

It woke me after only an hour of sleep.

In my half wake-half-sleep state I dreamt I was having an almighty argument with her about it. I woke again at 1:00am uttering the words "What's your fargone problem !" to her. Man I was annoyed with her about the TV noise and my thoughts materialized into a dream. The mind is a funny thing - no instruction book came with it.

I also realized I had a headache and had to do Mr Panadol. The things we do for fish.

The alarm woke me 5 minutes later at 4:30am (seemed like 5 minutes) and I literally dragged myself out of bed and out the back door. I was supposed to be excited and I was gonna be excited whether I liked it or not !

Then I realized something wasn't quite right.

I could hardly see the garage door.

What the FOG is going on ?

I wasn't dreaming this time.

Yes it has been so long since we had the pea soup in the air that I had forgotten about it.

It was foggy and I was gobsmacked.

I was having second thoughts of driving the boat down the river, crashing into other boats or logs floating on the current lines because it was too dark AND too foggy.

But I went to the ramp anyway, even though I know of the dangers I faced.

I launched the boat and had a chat with some other guys who also hesitated for the same reason. Net result, I was running late and the fog started to lift with the sunrise.

I could see at least 100m and that was enough !

Hammer down, watch the current lines for icebergs dead ahead.

I looked at the wake of the boat behind me to see the water quality - more pea soup.

The water was so bad I thought it was going to clog my outboard's cooling system.

I finally touched down at the Novotel and not a boat in sight.

The water looked cleaner there so I was optimistic. Anchor down but was sad to see there was no current.

Burley in and with only one undersized bream, I was off to deeper water looking for current in which to burley. Off to the third runway and again no current.

Not good, and the wind had swung SW. No fish at all there so off to the oil wharf.

The tide had started to fall but again, little current and nothing interesting to be caught.

So off to the Towra ultra shallows for the first of the falling tide.

Well banjo after banjo came to say hello but no bream or whiting.

The water was very silty so I was kind of stumped as to what to do.

It was about 10:00am and NO FISH !

Now there was HEAPS to complain about ! I felt so much better!

I tried a number of spots wide of Quibray Bay for a "one here, one there" scenario.

It was tough going. I was listening to the VHF radio CH21 and some guys were saying there were quite a number of waterspouts happening. I would love to see a photo of one.

Then as usually happens, the rod goes off like a speedboat just picked up the line in the prop. This time there was no boat in sight so I was thinking 'Eagle Ray', until it stopped and shook it's head. Now usually this is an eagle ray and I no longer get excited when it happens, but, I felt a headshake.

Oh Crap this must be something worthwhile. I forgot how to compose myself and get ready for a long fight. A jewie maybe well I hoped and hoped it was, but only the first run was kind of long - the others were very short so I was puzzled.

It wasn't a ray nor a bream / whiting. It was not a big trev. I rarely catch flatties. A big kingie would run forever and a tailor - no - too much weight.

After about 10 minutes a flash of silver not huge but worthwhile.

The water was brown so I could not identify it until it was virtually in the net. There it is !

Then my heart sank - a salmon ! The line had swapped around it's pectoral fins and was coming in sideways. That explains the resistance and the strange fight

Well it provided some fun, so in the box he goes for Thai fish cakes.

The next two fish were crackers so I was starting to smile and be happy. Definitely a strange feeling that one.

A bream at 39cm gave me a real hard fight because he was only lip-hooked.

The fish after that would have won me the first prize in the Pirtek challenge for the whiting. It came in at 44cm and really gave the old elbows a good slap. The surge of power from these fish as they see the boat is something I will never tire of.

I have said it before, bonefish are a rich man's whiting.

The bait ran out around 1:00pm and by that time I had about a dozen fish all up

Very lean catch but if you had asked me at 10:00am I would have said I was gonna go home with a Trung Donut ! With little pink sprinkles on it.

Oh well, the donut will have to wait.

On a previous trip, I had a whiting bitten clean in half - any speculation ?

And of course, the obligatory stingray with the hook embedded in it's sting...

Edited April 22, 2012 by Keflapod

[quintrex480]

Always a great read Tony! And as usual, well done on the bread n' butters. You sure know how to land them!

And we'll try to leave all the donuts with sprinkles to Trung.

Edited April 22, 2012 by quintrex480

[Yowie]

A good sized tailor has cleaned up your whiting, had that happen a number of times before on various fish.

[Guest hawkesbass]

Mice mixed bag makes the effort of moving around worth while

[dhype]

Always a great read Tony! And as usual, well done on the bread n' butters. You sure know how to land them!

And we'll try to leave all the donuts with sprinkles to Trung.

Great report and catch there Tony.... some great looking table fish.

Btw, if quintrex and yourself would like a personal tutorial in the art of catch donuts please feel free to contact me. I'm more than happy to pass this "skill" to anyone who is interested... and yes, the donuts with the sprinkles are the ones to get if you are targeting them... they taste better!

Cheers

Trung " aka -the donut king "

[DTROJAN]

Us Greeks, we like to complain about stuff.

..and when there's nothing to complain about, we complain about the fact there's nothing to complain about.

And this weekend we just had, well, it was no exception.

We complained about stuff.

I had worked out my itinerary on Friday afternoon for my assault the next morning.

First I was gonna try the water wide off the novotel, then off the third runway.

After that I was gonna go to the oil wharf for the first of the runout - see if any trevs or any bream were there. Then to the Towra shallows and Quibray bay areas.

I knew the water would be dirty from the recent floods of biblical proportions we just had. So I went to bed early after having prepared everything so I can get up early to catch the last of the run in tide. I figured this would be the cleanest water of the tide cycle and maybe have more fish in it.

At about 11:00pm I woke to the muffled sound of my wife watching TV.

It woke me after only an hour of sleep.

In my half wake-half-sleep state I dreamt I was having an almighty argument with her about it. I woke again at 1:00am uttering the words "What's your fargone problem !" to her. Man I was annoyed with her about the TV noise and my thoughts materialized into a dream. The mind is a funny thing - no instruction book came with it.

I also realized I had a headache and had to do Mr Panadol. The things we do for fish.

The alarm woke me 5 minutes later at 4:30am (seemed like 5 minutes) and I literally dragged myself out of bed and out the back door. I was supposed to be excited and I was gonna be excited whether I liked it or not !

Then I realized something wasn't quite right.

I could hardly see the garage door.

What the FOG is going on ?

I wasn't dreaming this time.

Yes it has been so long since we had the pea soup in the air that I had forgotten about it.

It was foggy and I was gobsmacked.

I was having second thoughts of driving the boat down the river, crashing into other boats or logs floating on the current lines because it was too dark AND too foggy.

But I went to the ramp anyway, even though I know of the dangers I faced.

I launched the boat and had a chat with some other guys who also hesitated for the same reason. Net result, I was running late and the fog started to lift with the sunrise.

I could see at least 100m and that was enough !

Hammer down, watch the current lines for icebergs dead ahead.

I looked at the wake of the boat behind me to see the water quality - more pea soup.

The water was so bad I thought it was going to clog my outboard's cooling system.

I finally touched down at the Novotel and not a boat in sight.

The water looked cleaner there so I was optimistic. Anchor down but was sad to see there was no current.

Burley in and with only one undersized bream, I was off to deeper water looking for current in which to burley. Off to the third runway and again no current.

Not good, and the wind had swung SW. No fish at all there so off to the oil wharf.

The tide had started to fall but again, little current and nothing interesting to be caught.

So off to the Towra ultra shallows for the first of the falling tide.

Well banjo after banjo came to say hello but no bream or whiting.

The water was very silty so I was kind of stumped as to what to do.

It was about 10:00am and NO FISH !

Now there was HEAPS to complain about ! I felt so much better!

I tried a number of spots wide of Quibray Bay for a "one here, one there" scenario.

It was tough going. I was listening to the VHF radio CH21 and some guys were saying there were quite a number of waterspouts happening. I would love to see a photo of one.

Then as usually happens, the rod goes off like a speedboat just picked up the line in the prop. This time there was no boat in sight so I was thinking 'Eagle Ray', until it stopped and shook it's head. Now usually this is an eagle ray and I no longer get excited when it happens, but, I felt a headshake.

Oh Crap this must be something worthwhile. I forgot how to compose myself and get ready for a long fight. A jewie maybe well I hoped and hoped it was, but only the first run was kind of long - the others were very short so I was puzzled.

It wasn't a ray nor a bream / whiting. It was not a big trev. I rarely catch flatties. A big kingie would run forever and a tailor - no - too much weight.

After about 10 minutes a flash of silver not huge but worthwhile.

The water was brown so I could not identify it until it was virtually in the net. There it is !

Then my heart sank - a salmon ! The line had swapped around it's pectoral fins and was coming in sideways. That explains the resistance and the strange fight

Well it provided some fun, so in the box he goes for Thai fish cakes.

The next two fish were crackers so I was starting to smile and be happy. Definitely a strange feeling that one.

A bream at 39cm gave me a real hard fight because he was only lip-hooked.

The fish after that would have won me the first prize in the Pirtek challenge for the whiting. It came in at 44cm and really gave the old elbows a good slap. The surge of power from these fish as they see the boat is something I will never tire of.

I have said it before, bonefish are a rich man's whiting.

The bait ran out around 1:00pm and by that time I had about a dozen fish all up

Very lean catch but if you had asked me at 10:00am I would have said I was gonna go home with a Trung Donut ! With little pink sprinkles on it.

Oh well, the donut will have to wait.

On a previous trip, I had a whiting bitten clean in half - any speculation ?

And of course, the obligatory stingray with the hook embedded in it's sting...

[DTROJAN]

Gday Tony, great read mate and still not a bad feed,

I agree with yowie, definately some big tailor in the bay at the moment as we caught half a tailor that measured 32cm(estimated 60+cm) And i believe it was eaten by a bigger tailor.

[tasksta]

That's a good haul, you gotta be happy with that?

I work with a few Greeks and your post explains a lot!

[Formosan]

Good report Tony. Nice to see they are still about.

Will have to get back into these Bread and Butter fishing with Jam Donuts.

[J Hooked]

Tony, great report!

Greeks aren’t that bad, are we? You should have seen the guy that almost backed his trailer into the front of my car last night at the ramp. (whinging). Um, that’s another story.

Great mixed bag of fish. Unlucky with that whiting chomped in half. It’s also happened to me

[Keflapod]

Guys,

I'm sure Trung's latest batch of donuts are only temporary.

We must all have pretty short memories if we have fogotten his reports of flatties, kingies, salmon, donuts, er, I mean crabs and sprinkles, sorry I meant squid.

His reports caused us to drool over his catches, especially those with strawberry sprinkles on them.

He deserves more respect than that.

I bet he's gonna make us eat our words when he next drags a squid over the kingie grounds.

Go get'em mate - remind us how it's done.

For those guys who have had whiting and other fish chomped in half, I was convinced they would be small sharks - never seen tailor as big as that suggested in the bay.

I would love to see one, especilally one that bit Peter DTrojan's 60cm tailor....

Tony

[jim bream]

Hi Tony great report again you did tough in those conditions but i find after rain there is always bream to be found its just a matter of hitting the right spot at the right time and that's the thing there were some reports of good catches Sunday so the fish are still in numbers in the bay . cheers Jim bream

[redpump]

Night fish and great report. Did you not enter the Pirtek challenge? Such a shame

[Keflapod]

Night fish and great report. Did you not enter the Pirtek challenge? Such a shame

Hi Redpumpkin,

Yes I did enter, but my best whiting that weekend was 41.5cm.

The winning fish was 43cm.

Last weekend I got a 44cm but it was 1 week too late.

No matter - good luck to the winner.

Tony

[tasksta]

Mate that is an awesome haul for a day out.

[skirulz]

Good catch mate... wouldnt mind targeting some snapper and kingies next time i am out

[nich]

Great read. Thanks for that. Keep it up. Always good having a read of the days activities.

[Frou]

Your reports have given me great entertainment Keflapod. So much so that I decided to create an account to let you know.

Hope to see more soon

[mrsswordfisherman]

4 hours ago, Frou said:

Your reports have given me great entertainment Keflapod. So much so that I decided to create an account to let you know.

Hope to see more soon

A reply on a ten year old post! We are glad you joined anyway and hope that Tony comes back to report  

[bessell1955]

Well that is bringing history back to life! 

[jenno64]

Good report Tony, I have no complaints:)

Nice bag of fish with some size too!