Although it has a happy ending, to fully tell the story I should start by saying that we had the family at the Coronet Bay house on the weekend, and in between playing cricket, wimming, weeding, painting and mowing we managed a couple of trips. Once again, it was in the boat as we had a bit of a full house a few times - You can't fit 5 kids in my poor kayak!
I was under the strict "You're on kid duty until they go to bed", and my
children have never had an earlier bed time than the past 4 days! We
arrived saturday afternoon (03/11) to beautiful glassed out conditions -
Conditions that would stay with us for basically the whole of Cup
Weekend. I checked the records and we haven't had a wind-free Cup
weekend since 1837!
After putting the kids in bed at about 7.30, Dad and I were at the Corinella ramp at about 8, and in a channel near Freeman's Point at about 8.30. We sounded a few promising arches in bout 7m of water and dropped the pick. Then we waited. And waited. Weed, weed and more weed - It was terrible! Dad managed a small port jackson and I managed an even smaller westernport cod for the night - From our only bites. We dejectedly headed in at 1am.
The next day I had a troop of kids down at the beach around midday for the low tide pumping bass yabbies. We got quite a few and launched the boat at Coronet Bay around 4pm. We anchored in about 3m of water and I baited up and cast out Ben, my 2 1/2 year old. As I was baiting mine up his rod buckled over and I pulled it out of the rod holder and gave it to him, assisting him to pull in a 36.5cm whiting. I told him it was a "horse" whiting and he repeated the phrase ad nauseum to my Dad who was fishless for a lot of the session, and he wasn't overly impressed with this. My first cast I hooked another one and gave it to one of my nephews (We had 2 nephews, my son and my Dad on the boat!) and he expertly pulled in another whiting of similar size. We did miss a lot of bites and lose a few mid fight, but the kids had a ball and Dad even managed a couple of whiting soon after. As I was winding in at one stage the biggest pike I have ever seen grabbed my bass yabbie and I got him to the surface before he bit through the 10lb flurocarbon leader. We also got a small banjo shark, but ended up keeping the 4 whiting.
On Monday Dad had to work and I was again followed around by 5 kids. By the time he got back about 7pm I was ready to hit the water, and he had brought Graham, a mate of his along with us. We launched just after 7 and hit the whiting mark armed with the day before's bass yabbies, looking a little worse for wear as the aerator battery had died some time during the day. Nonetheless, we started well and managed 8 or so really good whiting, a few pinkies and one lonesome yakka before dark. When dusk came, we headed out into about 7m of water where we immediately sounded up a solid arch. We threw the rods out with an assortment of yakka fillet, pilchards and whiting heads and sat back. We didn't have to wait long as my rod baited with yakka fillet started bouncing in a fashion that was definitely a gummy shark. I waited for it to load up fully and set the hook. After a very lively fight I brought aboard a nice gummy of approximately 1m in length. It was good to have the relatively tide free (And therefore weed free!) conditions of Coronet Bay back again!
Although not our quarry in the first snapper trip of the season, it was a very welcome bycatch. I re-baited and threw it out again. About 2 minutes later my other rod, baited with a pilchard screamed off. I picked it up and the fish had spat the bait, but this was unmistakable: I had just missed a red. Again I re-baited with a pilchard and threw it back out. Ten minutes went by and the same thing happened, however this time I struck and was rewarded with some solid head thumps. After a tense fight I brought aboard a very plump 68cm snapper - Not huge, but our first for the season.
It went a bit quiet, then Dad had a nice bite that turned out to be a port jackson shark. He had been getting very excited for a little while! My rod baited with yakka went off again and there was a sense of mutiny on the boat as so far I had had all the luck. Luckily (for me) the culprit turned out to be a massive skate, that took a lot of coercion to get off the bottom and to the boat, where he was cut off and released. We waited a little longer, and at 11.30 we headed for home.
Only then Dad reminded me that I had done what we call the "Westernport trifecta", which is a snapper, gummy shark and whiting in the same trip. I wasn't quite as lucky in the Melbourne Cup the next day!
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