Fairly quiet weekend on the Hawkesbury

[kiwicraig]

Some mates and I hired a houseboat for a weekend and parked up Friday and Saturday nights in Little Pinta to try for some hairtail.  Spent a lot of hours fishing but it was pretty quite over all and not a single hairtail - though we did get some bites that felt like hairtail.  

Friday night was the better of the two.  Picked up a couple of nice trevs, both taken on some garlicy chicken breast off Shark Rock Point at dusk.  We then went back to the houseboat for some dinner and went out to chase that elusive hairtail.  Two of my mates had pillies down and I took a fillet off one of the trevs and put a strip of that down on ganged hooks.  Somehow my mates managed to get their lines tangled so I put my rod in the holder and I had just managed to free up the two lines when my rod bucked in the holder.  I threw my mates rod at him and struck my rod.  I was on, but I knew it was not a hairy because I could feel tail beats.  I wasn't sure what it was on, but when it came up and I saw the sheen of silver I knew I had my first jew.  It was only a tiddler at about 40cm but a first is a first so we snapped a quick photo and returned it to get a bit bigger.

Saturday was a bit of a wash.  Picked up a few yakkas for bait that we kept for bait and lots of small tailor well short of 30cms that we threw back.  Then I got my anchor snagged and we could not free it.  After trying for ages we had to cut the rope.  This was a problem as we were wanting to fish for hairtail that night so I motored into Pittwater and grabbed an Uber into Mona Vale to get a new anchor, some chain and the associated fixtures.  We then motored back to the houseboat and had to splice in the thimble eye.  All up several hours of fishing time lost.  Mind you some of my mates were in another boat and spent most of that time fishing with precious little to show for it.

We went out again that night and fished through dusk and well into dark.  The sounder was awash with activity and we had a mix of baits down between the two boats we tried trev strips, yakka fillets, a live yakka, a live squid, salted pilchards, prawns, tailor strips and mullet strips.  Not a single bite - except the cold.  Once that started to bite we went back to home base for dinner.  Due to the lack of activity none of us were too keen to head out again so we had a few quiets instead.

Sunday morning I needed to get back fairly early so I helped clean up the house boat, popped into Cottage Point for a bit of extra fuel and then motored back round to Blackwall.  A disappointing showing from the fish but we all had a great time and the weather was as spectacular as the fishing wasn't  

[blaxland]

Good report has given me some good ideas cheers and thanks

[Regan]

pain you caught no hairtail but at least you caught your first jew

that sunset is spectacular

[ARC H]

mate welldone on the first jewie

good pics to

[Rah]

Well done on your first Jew.

 

Sounds like a great weekend even without the hairtail.