Fathers day present

[SgtBundy]

The wife knew exactly what fathers day present I wanted - fishing time! So with that available to me I decided to make a day of it and go for an early start even though the tides did not seem ideal for it, have a crack though the morning and then have a session on the afternoons high tide.

Left home at 5am for the south end of Palm Beach to try off the rocks near the ocean pool, arriving a little after 6 but missing sunrise due to the overcast conditions and light rain. I didn't have opportunity to get any live or fresh bait as I would have liked, so it was frozen salted pilchards and some prawns from recent trevally attempts. Having had some mild luck in the past there with pilchards under a float I tried that again, but it was not to be. Using floats I just kept getting snagged on shallow submerged rock bars or on the rocks in front as I was winding in. After going through a few rigs I switched to a sinker paternoster rig and cast futher out, but the low tide and swell kept putting my line onto the submerged rocks and snagging the braid. I rigged up the sinkers with lighter line to allow them to break off but it still resulted in snags that lost part or all of the rig. Even though I was getting some bites they seemed small, and I only managed some tiny sort of black rock cod. I moved locations but while avoiding getting snagged there I was not getting any bites. Pulled the pin around 10am and went south to check out Narrabeen but it didn't look appealing so I opted to head for the harbour somewhere.

Stopped in at a tackle shop in manly vale to replace some of the kit I lost in the morning, and grabbed lunch nearby.

Had not planned for where to fish the afternoon but I still had plenty of burley and bait for trevally so that was going to be my target. I swung past Balmoral just to check it out and was surprised to see it was empty of fishos. Being a rare occurance I figured I would give it a go as some other nearby locations had not produced for me recently, even though I hate the parking charges there.

Setup just before 1 with not much activity to begin with, aside from some small hits which I put down to yakkas but they dispersed when a cormorant showed up. I setup one rod for trevally and a larger rod was set out deeper with some pilchards on the bottom. Both got regular hits but nothing to show for it. Around 2:30 the hits picked up for a while and I thought I was onto a trevally but as I got it up I thought it was a small king, but was just a horse of a yakka with a very yellow tail - I kept it for bait fillets. The rest of the afternoon was mostly small bream and another small yakka which was set out live for the high tide around 3:40. As high tide approached it was oddly quiet - to the surprise of another fisho who turned up and was teaching some older asian gentlemen how to fish. It was overcast and it seemed like ok conditions - water was a little green but I would have thought it was ok for some activity. Speaking to the Balmoral regular, Joseph, it seems like saturday was pretty good with some bonito and trevally around, he was not catching much either on sunday so maybe the turn in weather put them off.

As the wind picked up after 4 it got a little cold and miserable, so with no activity I packed up and called it a day. Good to get out for a real session but looking forward to some warmer weather to pick things up.