Outgunned and Outclassed - 16/9 Fishing at Coffs
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:01 pm
What a beautiful day to be on the water, low 20's, less than a metre of seas and 1.5 swell.
Ran up to the Park Beach Bommie for some bait, managed a scrawny yakka, couple of pike and some other fish that looked like it'd make a good livey
Baited up I went to Split Solitary, as usual I was swarmed by silver trevally and sweep the first drop of berley, I perserved and eskied a couple of nice trevally, and boated two 30cm kingies. There was a school of 60cm+ kingies but nothing I could throw at them resulted in a hit, they looked at everything I threw overboard though...
Moved a bit further around the island and threw plastics for a while and got some more good silvers, and a bluefin trevally. Hooked something that ran hard for about 30 metres before throwing the jig... prob a rat king?
Headed back to the harbour and thought I'd drop some squid onto the Park Beach Bommie and see if anything interesting showed up, when I got there I could see some fish busting up the surface just out of casting range, I figured they were choppers or salmon so tied a 10g raider onto my 2-4kg Bream Raider with 4lb braid (trevors are soo much fun on this combo) motored into casting distance and let fly, then I saw what it was busting up - it was a school of tuna in the 8-10kg range - oh Nuts!!!
Naturally, first cast and I hook up, it took a second for the tuna to realise what was going on, a couple of headshakes and then it just took off. I may as well have hooked a passing humpback. 600 grams of drag was nothing in the face of a not happy tuna. Fortunately the motor was still running so I chased off after it, it had gone deep and I wanted to avoid running over the line. Watching the 150m of 4lb braid tear off the little 30 size spinning reel brought both excitment and fear, I knew I only had about 30m of backing after the braid and with about 10 turns of braid left on the spool it was time to start palming the spool - pretty much straight away that busted me off.....
Not sure what sort of tuna it was, I thought Mack at first, but I couldn't see the squiggly lines on its back so maybe it was a longtail.
Anyway, enough trevors for a feed for a couple of days, what a great day on the water!
Ran up to the Park Beach Bommie for some bait, managed a scrawny yakka, couple of pike and some other fish that looked like it'd make a good livey
Baited up I went to Split Solitary, as usual I was swarmed by silver trevally and sweep the first drop of berley, I perserved and eskied a couple of nice trevally, and boated two 30cm kingies. There was a school of 60cm+ kingies but nothing I could throw at them resulted in a hit, they looked at everything I threw overboard though...
Moved a bit further around the island and threw plastics for a while and got some more good silvers, and a bluefin trevally. Hooked something that ran hard for about 30 metres before throwing the jig... prob a rat king?
Headed back to the harbour and thought I'd drop some squid onto the Park Beach Bommie and see if anything interesting showed up, when I got there I could see some fish busting up the surface just out of casting range, I figured they were choppers or salmon so tied a 10g raider onto my 2-4kg Bream Raider with 4lb braid (trevors are soo much fun on this combo) motored into casting distance and let fly, then I saw what it was busting up - it was a school of tuna in the 8-10kg range - oh Nuts!!!
Naturally, first cast and I hook up, it took a second for the tuna to realise what was going on, a couple of headshakes and then it just took off. I may as well have hooked a passing humpback. 600 grams of drag was nothing in the face of a not happy tuna. Fortunately the motor was still running so I chased off after it, it had gone deep and I wanted to avoid running over the line. Watching the 150m of 4lb braid tear off the little 30 size spinning reel brought both excitment and fear, I knew I only had about 30m of backing after the braid and with about 10 turns of braid left on the spool it was time to start palming the spool - pretty much straight away that busted me off.....
Not sure what sort of tuna it was, I thought Mack at first, but I couldn't see the squiggly lines on its back so maybe it was a longtail.
Anyway, enough trevors for a feed for a couple of days, what a great day on the water!
