First time at Illawong Bay

[ireallylovefishies22]

Evening raiders,

Headed out to Illawong Bay on Saturday with @eaglesilk5 and @44jeff. We had been pretty keen to try out the spot as Eagle had been telling us of a couple good sessions he had there in the past few weeks. 

We arrived at about 10 and started fishing at the very right side of Illawong Point, near the guard rails. Baits of choice today was chicken, prawns, pillies, yakkas, squid and bread for burley. Quite a nice variety to use if certain things weren't working. 

It started off pretty slow with us using a mix of chicken and yakka and casting out wide. Bites were coming thick and fast, but the only fish we managed to catch were small pinky snapper and tarwhine. Jeff managed to catch a large trumpeter, which he gave to Eagle to use as a livie. He casted it out a fair bit away to avoid tangles and leaned it upon the guard rail. 

After a while with no good fish in our particular location, Jeff and I moved over to the sand flat using pillies and soft plastics in search of a flatty. After losing my lure first cast and Jeff losing his pilly to pickers, we headed back to our gear and continued to fish like we were originally, while Eagle went over to the flat. Before long, I see Eagle's rod bend over like mad out of the corner of the eye. I run over to it just in time as it is nearly pulled out of the holder. It was a better fish than the micro fish we had been catching all morning, but no monster nonetheless. As I get the fish closer to shore, I see a nice bream around the 27cm mark. However, one last headshake, and the fish got off.

The quality only seemed to pick up from there. A few minutes later, my own rod got a nice hit and after a quick fight, I managed to land a decent 40cm flatty. Perfect eating size. As I was dispatching the flatty, I hear a ring of bells and a short burst of drag. Eagle's livie had been taken! I ran over as quickly as I could, but by the time I reached the rod, it was no longer bent and the line was slack. I stood there for a few moments, before giving in to the pressure and picked up the rod. I was met with an extremely heavy weight that felt similar to a snag, but a few seconds later, the thing was on a blistering run that lasted for about 15 seconds followed by some large headshakes. At this point i'm thinking its a monster jew, and my heart was truly in my throat. I went pretty hard on the fish, as I didn't want it to brick me in the snaggy terrain. About 5 minutes later, I caught the first glimpse of the fish. Initially, seeing the white belly and brown back had me convinced it was a meter long flatty, but the large fork shaped tail gave it away as a bronze whaler. Although I was disappointed it wasn't a big jew or flatty, i was still pretty happy just being able to just catch such a large fish. After taking a few quick photos and getting a measure (110cm), placed the fish back into the water where it remained limp. While we only had it out of the water for about 2-3 minutes, the shark looked like it wouldn't make it. Just as we were giving up hope after swimming it for 10 minutes, the shark suddenly regained all its energy and kicked off strongly from Eagle's arms.

It was rather uneventful over the next few hours, mainly involving us catching tiddlers. However when i wandered back over to the flats, I found a cuttlefish floating there with its head bitten in half. It was very fresh; its skin was still changing colour and blinking. Parts of its eye were still there, so I doubt that someone caught it, ripped its head off and chucked it back in. Any thoughts on this? 

I took the cuttlefish back to use as fresh bait. This resulted in more pinky snapper and tarwhine (surprise surprise) and a nearly legal bream. 

I headed back over to the flat in hopes of catching whatever took a bit out of the cuttle. Worked the flats for about 15 minutes before heading back. When I arrived back I was pleasantly surprised that my friends had managed to land a very fat 32cm snapper on my rod; a new pb for us. Definitely not the biggest, but being landbased fishos, this was something we had wanted to catch for quite a while.

After the snapper, the small stuff seemed to fire up even more. Baits were being eating before they even landed on the bottom. After an hour of catching micros, we packed up and headed home.

Overall, a pretty decent day of fishing, with the highlight definitely being the bronze whaler. Quite happy with the flathead and legal snapper too.

 

 

 

Edited Monday at 10:52 AM by ireallylovefishies22

[wazatherfisherman]

Nice report of a fun trip by the sounds of it. That spot is one of the few land based options for catching a Hairtail around Sydney and can be absolutely packed with fishers of a night, looking at the water of a night sees a stack of illuminated corks drifting together.

Good on you for reviving the shark, there are a few Kingfish zipping around during the day also at times and heaps of small Mulloway- mostly not big enough to keep.

Last few times we've been there a pesky Pelican has been there also- which made it hard to get very many live baits.

Probably one of the most comfortable spots to fish you'll ever find, but really cold after dark.

If you'd like any info on the Hairtail just ask.

Edited Monday at 02:49 PM by wazatherfisherman

[kantong]

great little session there, well done on catching and releasing the shark