Another Corinella donut

After hitting Mornington in the morning, we launched at Coronet Bay (Yes the tide was high enough!) just after 5pm yesterday arvo. As I only had 4 squid from the morning Dad thought we should get more, so we started flicking jigs around, and both put out pilchards on squid spikes under floats. We had a few moves between Coronet Bay and Reef Island for not much, and just on dusk we were about to pull the lines in and my float went under - A fairly lengthy fight ensued and one of my biggest squid to date was brought to the boat. I remarked that it would be too big for bait so rather than cut it up it should go to the table but Dad disagreed, so into the esky for bait it went!

I pulled up the the ramp and dropped Dad off who drove the car and trailer around to Corinella and I motored around and met him at the ramp. We headed straight to our spot and as it was high tide did not have to negotiate the web of channels in between which significantly reduced the travel time. As we got nearer a light came on - Yep a yakker was there again! The same guy who has been there the last 2 times. We gave him a bit of a wide berth and fished below him, however within 10 minutes he drifted past - He was on to a monster! I've gotta give it to the PA boys as he was standing up fighting this fish in absolute darkness with no worries about losing his balance. We asked him if he needed assistance as he was drifting quite fast but he said he had a net and a gaff and would be fine, also that it was kicking so it wasn't a ray. About 10 minutes later he came back past to anchor again - Turns out it was a big eagle ray!

Within the next 30 minutes Dad and I both landed smallish gummies that went back to grow bigger and things went quiet. We moved up the channel a bit at about 11pm (The yakker had long since returned in) and tried there where we were harrassed by elephants. Dad had a good run on half of the big squid's head (Which was still massive) and his reel started going backwards - He had somehow turned off the anti-reverse - Rookie mistake!

After too many elephants stealing our good baits we dropped a small rod in and I landed 3 small bay trout, which were to become livies. All of the banks were exposed now and it was back to our spot in 3m of water and out went a livie on one of my rods and a squid strip on the other.

After an hour or so of nothing we packed up at 2am and headed in, again not taking anything home. It was also interesting to see that even the snapper didn't turn up as they have been there every other time.

A couple of lessons learnt:

#1 use your anti-reverse Dad! We sit out there long enough without decent bites to miss one like that.

#2 Big squid aren't as good bait as little squid. The strips seem very fat, however they would probably be ok for somthing like gummies.

We took some pictures on Dad's camera, so they'll be up soon!