Kayak stress relief

[SgtBundy]

Between weather, work, family events and issues and potential house hunting its been a while I have done a kayak session. With work stress pilling up of late the wife sent me fishing (I didn't argue) so I did a lazy start at middle harbour today, launching after 10 from Clontarf.

The plan was live baiting (a work vendor was teasing me that yakkas were back around Balmoral) but when I setup my live bait tank just would not go. Even stranger the sounder was working even though its power feed was turned off. I should have thought about this some more but after a few replugs and tests I figured something had gone with the switches and I would have to look into it later. But it meant if I got any livies I would have nowhere to keep them.

Tried around the fridge and marked some bait schools but was unable to tease any up, even though a few boats around me were. Tried for a while but decided to go check Balmoral headland but found nothing at all there. Spotted a series of bust ups in the Balmoral marina but was not quick enough to get into them by the time I put a metal on so I just trolled around towards middle head.

I brought some banana prawns with me intended for baiting my bait jig if they were not hitting it clean. Having spotted no more bait I put the prawns out to see if I could pull anything that way. Got some picker interest but nothing that would take that hook. Around then a series of bust ups started near by me and I had the metal ready this time but they kept going under so fast only to pop up again in another direction completely. Fighting boat wakes (please people slow down if you have to go near kayaks) and swell made it tricky to fully chase the bustups, but they stayed around enough to have a few attempts. At one point I was completely surrounded by salmon and I could see them darting up and past my kayak, I even watched one follow my 5g metal up and then give up at the last minute. In the end they moved off faster than I could keep up and I wasn't keen to push further south around middle head anyway.

I tried dangling prawns again on the north side of middle head but no takes, and took to trolling a lure again back towards Balmoral and back over towards Clontarf. With the tide change coming up at 3:45 I headed over to the other side of the spit bridge to see if I could pick up anything over there. As the tide steadied I tried jigging some plastic whip baits but again no takes. I continued the troll, drop prawns, repeat back around to the fridge. By that time the sun was getting low so I called it a day.

After I got home I took apart my electrics and found nothing wrong. After some further head scratching I realised my "3 different plugs so I cant mix them up" setup had a flaw (I have to dismantle the whole setup each trip to put the kayak on the car roof, so the through hull cables all have to be unplugged) . Two of the plugs are the same type, but opposite male/female. So the sounder worked because it was getting the battery plug direct, the live bait tank didn't work because the battery plug wasn't going into the switch box. Facepalm. Time to colour code.

A nice enough day on the water even though it was a donut - better before the wind picked up mid afternoon but otherwise fine. Good to see a lot more activity both in bust ups and sounder marks. Hopefully as it warms up things will improve (as will I).

[big Neil]

Good report Sgt. Sounds like you managed to de-stress a bit AND solve the problem with the electrics. Better luck next time with the fish.

[fragmeister]

Nice report... sounds like spring on the harbour.

Those salmon can be very tricky to entice this time of year.

Better times are coming!

Cheers

Jim