My "ozzie angling adventures" - Report 8

[snatcher]

This is the start of my 2012 angling adventures. My ozzie mate Ollie is a great fisherman and one of his aims was to catch a shark off the shore. With this in mind he picked me up at my daughters place in Freshwater and we headed off to Manly Lagoon to try and catch some mullet for livebait. We gave it about an hour without a fish but Ollie did manage to catch a duck !!!!! After this plan B came into operation - to buy some mackerel at the shop for his shark bait.

We parked up about the middle of Manly beach and started setting up our gear. I just had a spinning rod and intended to bottom fish using squid for bait. Ollie on the other hand set up his shark rod and using his surf board intended to paddle his bait out about 150m. Crazy guy.

This is a picture of Ollie's shark bait ready to go.

Here is a picture of Ollie with his surfboard.

The guy in the background was fishing worm and picked up a few whiting.

I held Ollies rod and put the reel into free spool as he paddled the shark bait out. About 100m out he got overturned by a big wave but still managed to recover and paddled further out still. There were guys surfing about 100m either side of us. I was getting a bite every cast but could not manage a hook up so I dropped the hook size down from a 2/0 to a size 1 baitholder. This paid dividends as I managed to hook a bream on the next cast. A quick picture and back it went.

Ollie on the other hand was watching his rod with great anticipation,just waiting for that reel to go screaming off. It was getting dusk by this time and I hooked into a fish and it bit straight through my 15lb mono. Ollie reckoned it was probably a tailor biting me off and suggested I should use a 40lb mono trace. Ollie was spot on with what he said and after a couple of casts I did hook a small tailor,a new species for me so I was well chuffed.

During my 2008 Australian trip I had managed to get 20 species. This tailor now made it 21. Ollies had no runs on his shark bait so as it started to rain we decided to call it a day. On the fishing front it had been a poor trip but I did enjoy the crack with Ollie in great surroundings. About a week previous my daughter had said that the shark alarm had been sounded on Manly beach and that the swimmers had got out of the water but most of the surfers had just continued !!!!!

My next report will see me trying for kingfish in the harbour

John

Edited March 8, 2015 by snatcher

[nbdshroom]

That was a great read. Caught a few ducks (unintentionally) in my time too and its not a pretty sight! Bad luck with the shark plan, it would have been interesting to see what you might have caught if you fished a few hours into the dark. Well done on ticking off another species off the list.

[snatcher]

That was a great read. Caught a few ducks (unintentionally) in my time too and its not a pretty sight! Bad luck with the shark plan, it would have been interesting to see what you might have caught if you fished a few hours into the dark. Well done on ticking off another species off the list.

Well eventually a toothy critter did turn up for my fishing mate Ollie in Sydney Harbour Back home in Whitley Bay now and full internet connection now. Will wedge on my next report in a day or two. I did keep a sort of angling diary on my 4 trips to your great country. Will post up a good cross section of my angling adventures. Hope you are enjoying the reports so far.

John