Subject: yak fishing today -- 26mar08
Date: Wednesday, 26 March 2008 3:21pm
The honour of writing this report falls to me, and I do so while my unspectacular but welcome catch gently chills in the fridge in preparation for filleting later.
Starters: Jaro and your correspondent, who arrived at MG at 0630-ish. Shortly thereafter I captured the moment, but not before the wheel fell off Jaro's yak trolley, possibly a portent of his day.
Anyway, this is how it looked at launch time:
The surf crossing was actually a bit meaner than the picture indicates, but J and I were out the back with little hassle a couple of minutes later. Having set up our gear, we set course for JS, although I was flying blind initially as my GPS opted to play the "can't find the satellites" game (which it does in about one in 20-30 startups). To help it, I tell it that it is now hundreds of km from where it previously turned on and it dutifully does a total sky search which successfully locates the desired orbiting objects in a few minutes.
About 1.5km from the beach we started to encounter lots of terns feeding on baitfish being massacred from below by tuna. In a few minutes we were right amongst the carnage. And although I briefly switched to a small slug lure, I was unsuccessful in enticing a predator and anyway my mission was to catch a snapper or two. Here's one pic of the action right next to the yak (note that, in the original pic, the top of the tail fin of a tuna is visible in the splash on the right):
As you can see from the pic above, the water has cleaned up considerably. And so, mindful of our mission, we turned away from the tuna action and headed for the reef, which we found where it usually is, a short while later. As there was a gentle SW breeze I opted to start my drift ~300m SW from the centre. On my second or third cast with the jig I hooked up to a fish which fought differently to our usual quarry. I suspect that it was a small trevally as it darted about all over the place but I can't tell you for sure as it managed to throw the hook at the last stage of the fight -- not an auspicious start on this near perfect (weather) day.
Continuing the drift I was shortly afterward rewarded with a strike which I correctly judged to be a sweetlip, and although not huge, a keeper nevertheless, and my first from the reef in 2008. Here he is:
Shortly after this fish was boated, Jaro, still fishless and looking a little glum, paddled over to compare notes. Just as he arrived I hooked up again to what was apparently a slightly better fish, so I played it for all it was worth, as I'm sure Jaro would have done were the situation reversed. Despite my opinion expressed earlier to Jaro that this was another, slightly larger sweetlip, it turned out to be a snapper -- another keeper!! And here he is:
By around 0930 I caught another slightly smaller snapper, but still a keeper, and also around that time the 5knot SW breeze dropped away to nothing, killing our drift. We persisted until around 1015 when we decided to call it a day. Jaro hates to go home fishless and so he was not a happy chappy to leave, but at least it was a glorious morning to be out there.
We set course for MG and as we travelled it became more and more apparent that we were again going to run the gauntlet of tuna schools, baitfish balls, and wheeling terns. Our few half hearted attempts to hook up on a tuna proved fruitless but at last a brighter spot appeared in Jaro's day: his trolled lure picked up some discarded braid fishing line, which turned out to have a large expensive Rapala (or similar) lure attached to it. So Jaro's lure collection received a free augmentation.
And so we arrived back at our start point. We picked the surf break nicely and one behind the other, cruised onto the beach. Now, the proof of the chick-magnetism of mature kayak fishermen. No sooner were we back on our feet on the beach after a three-four hour sit down (or on-top) when we were mobbed by damsels wanting to have their photos taken with us. Jaro, I think we could start charging for this privilege. Anyway here's one of them:
Weather's looking great for tomorrow. We might just go again. Call me if you're interested.
Kev
Red & Yellow Espri, black paddle
VHF channel 09, Call Sign: sunshiner
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