RSS Feed (xml)Forget Kate and Prince William – Yesterday the royals were well and truly at Hastings! Although this is another non-yak report, I’ll definitely have a few over the next couple of weeks!
I got a call from Les over the weekend – He wanted to go fishing yesterday but had nobody to go with, so my arm was twisted into going (Ok, no twisting was necessary). We launched at Stony Pt just after 5am with what seemed most of Melbourne, probably due to it being the first decent day in weeks. Credit to the facilities, the line moved swiftly and the 3 ramps worked well.
I had gotten some great GPS marks for the west side of the port, and although most of the boats headed right to hit up Rhyll (Silverleaves and Observation Pt are still the place to be for the reds), we headed right towards Hastings. Les has a circa 1920 depth sounder on his boat that only displays the bottom and anything else shows up as a little pixelated fish symbol, so while it was still dark we searched for some broken bottom, and stopped in about 13m of water over what looked to be a reef. Lots of casts, lots of bites, not lots of fish. The flatties were ravenous but too small for our 5/0 hooks, although I did manage a 35cm one that got filleted and sent back as bait.
As it got light I borrowed Les’ portable handheld GPS and finally figured how to key in a mark, and we went to a spot just off Hastings in about 16m of water which felt very fishy as we were casting. Les quickly produced 2 pinkies (About 30cm each) and then his rod buckled over again – A 42cm whiting on a 5/0 with pilchard on it! I pulled in a 30cm pinkie, released it and quickly dropped down my 4lb outfit with a sinker that was too big for it, a paternoster rig and some squid strips on #6 long shank hooks. Over the next 30 minutes I pulled in 9 whiting between 34cm-44cm, most being in the bigger size bracket. Les then got on the board with his second whiting, slightly smaller than his first. I then hooked something I couldn’t budge from the bottom and suddenly felt like it was free. After about 5 minutes I pulled in a 44cm trevally on the top hook, with no sinker or bottom hook. I had had a double hook up on them and the bottom one had broken off, although even the one was almost too much for my poor little outfit!
As the tide slackened so did the fish and I finally had a bite on a bigger rod with a cutlet of yakka (I had caught a couple amongst the whiting) on it. A fairly fast run but not many head shakes so I called it for a skate. As it turned to run again it was gone. I pulled in the now slack line and it had bitten me off – Must have been a seven gill shark I assume.
We left the spot and tried a few shallow marks in 3-5m of water along middle spit then near Tankerton but I could only manage one salmon.
On the way back to the ramp my salmon became bait cutlets and we stopped on the edge of the channel in 16m of water. Not much at all, except I pulled up another whiting, this time about 34cm. As we were about to pull up stumps and head in my rod with the salmon on it bounced around in characteristic gummy shark fashion. It slowly loaded up and I struck... To nothing! I couldn’t believe I had missed it! This was enough and we headed in, where back at the ramp most boaties had done well on the snapper but no-one else seemed to have any of the royals, and one of them even said he was chasing whiting when he got the snapper and asked if I wanted to swap fish! As I have a few snapper left in the freezer I declined and we came home with 1 trevally, 2 pinkies and 12 King George whiting. A nice session on the water in absolutely flat conditions and not a breath of wind. That is how it should always be!
When I got home I decided that crumbed whiting, chips and salad should be on the menu for dinner so here is my signature dish for the next season of Masterchef:
