Plan C

[Guest Guest123456789]

Put the boat in late afternoon at Terrigal. Missed out on Saturday perfect conditions so had to settle for 25 knot WSW winds, rain and dirty water ???.

My go to is lure fishing in close so I did lots of trolling runs, anchored up and threw lures and jigged. A quarter of a tank later I had two small Bonito.

That would not feed a family of 4 so I decided to do something I don't normally do, fish into the night. I cut off the lures, dusted off the hook and sinker tackle box and rigged up a paternoster rig and a floater rig. I deployed my frozen burley logs and while the light faded threw lures from the front while the baits soaked.

i didn't have to wait long. The bite came on and came on hot!! Every bloody yakka north of Sydney swarmed my baits. At one stage I thought they might all pick up the boat and tip it over. To add insult to injury a  heap of frigate mackeral busted up around me but wouldn't take a lure, they were feeding on those small baits, 'eyes' I think they're called?

Thankfully, the burley logs melted, the bait fish left and some bigger marks started to show on the sounder. The paternoster rig was pissing me off so I brought it in and switched to just the floater bait. Annoyingly, despite all the activity I couldn't tempt a fish. I tried different presentation methods, retrieves, hooks, strung up some live baits, even tried some scented lures. I couldn't turn a reel!!

It was getting colder, windier, the sea was building and I was starting to tire, both physically and mentally. I was peeved that i used up one Bonito and now I had only one left, which would feed only half of one kid.

Before throwing the towel in I stumbled across some old green glow sticks in the tackle box and thought I'd give this one final go. Not 5 seconds after the bait hits the water I'm hooked up to an ok size tailor. Brought him in quickly, ok maybe I can salvage a meal here after all. The next 60 minutes was a fish a caste, and it was a bit of everything, a real mixed bag. Tailor, flathead, snapper, squid, even a pike hit the bait. Very cool when you see you glow stick, then the fish hits and and starts swimming towards you!!! 

I decided to call it a night, I threw back close to a dozen undersized or undesirable fish and kept 4 fish and a squid for the table and two fish for the lemon gardeners (aka neighbours).

i left the boat out overnight to clean in the morning, bloody hell it was a mess!!! Blood and guts from rear end to breakfast!!! Thanks for reading.

Luke.

[Scratchie]

Persistence pays off Luke! Sometimes we get caught up on our first plan and forget to change things up when others aren't working! My go to, is burley and drift unweighted baits down the trail. You'll be surprised how often you'll come up tight! 

cheers scratchie!!! 

[Guest Guest123456789]

Thanks @Scratchie

It seems like a productive way to fish, particularly when the fish are lower in the water column.

What depth do you like to fish this sort of method with? What sort of structure?

Seems like drop offs and holes near some sand are good? I was at 11 metres which might be why I had the problem with yakkas? 

[rickmarlin62]

hows the ramp at terrigal now ???

[Scratchie]

I'll fish this method from 10-25m. Usually from structure to a drop off!! Works for me!  

[harold]

Great result. 

[fragmeister]

Good read Luke.

I always revert to burley and baits and that situation too.

Its a bit of a leap of faith sometimes though.

Cheers

Jim

 

[Guest Guest123456789]

2 hours ago, rickmarlin62 said:

hows the ramp at terrigal now ???

Good and bad. Good in that 3 boats can use it at once and it extends further into the ocean so it's great for spinning from at high tide. Bad in that the surge is worse, getting the boat onto the trailer is really hard without a decky or boat catch, my tinny is light and I'm big so it does get on after bashing the trailer around a bit! My mentor thinks the profile of the ramp is so large that a really big not Easter could break it in half.

 

46 minutes ago, Scratchie said:

I'll fish this method from 10-25m. Usually from structure to a drop off!! Works for me!  

Thanks Scratchie this helps a lot. I need to do some scouting.

 

38 minutes ago, harold said:

Great result. 

Thanks Harold.

 

3 minutes ago, fragmeister said:

Good read Luke.

I always revert to burley and baits and that situation too.

Its a bit of a leap of faith sometimes though.

Cheers

Jim

 

Thanks Jim. It did take some faith I didn't have high hopes, not really knowing what I was doing and all!!! A bit of luck fishing goes a long way sometimes!

[Guest Guest123456789]

Cooked up very nice and lots of food. Even after giving two fish away we got more than I expected. Snapper sashimi is the sweetest!! ?

Has anyone's else's extended families put the pressure on to catch a haul of seafood for Easter??? Pressure is on! 

[Yowie]

Yakkas will swarm up to the boat during darkness, and swim into water of shallow depths during the night if you burley them up (less than 2 metres deep)

Many years ago I fished out off Cronulla a few times around one of the reefs, in a neighbours large boat. He would turn on the light over the water, throw out burley and the water would come alive with yakkas, slimies and on the edge of the light I could see quite a few small sharks, looked like whalers. Just out of range of the light were tailor. Plenty of fish to catch, but the sharks were harder to catch as they did not hook up, they just seemed interested in the burley. Probably fish underneath that lot, but the floating baits did not sink very far before being eaten.