Trip date: 20 Sept 2014
Participants: Redwood
Launch Site: Weyba Creek
Destination: River Mouth
Conditions: Rainy with strong run-out, tide almost full low
Keen Angler Program: none
Having missed an opportunity to go offshore earlier in the day the need to get on the water was strong, so I decide to hit the river even though the moon phase wasn’t ideal but fishing the run-out to the bottom can often be good. I checked the weather and the rainy patches looked they'd move off and their appeared to be nothing major behind them.
At 8.45pm I dropped the yak into the South Side of Weyba Creek and paddled toward Munna Point Bridge. Just before the bridge I thought I’d hooked something and spent 5 minutes fighting someones lost fishing line. No idea where it came from or where it was going, but I managed to cut it and get my rig back without too much drama. I paddled on headed for Ricky’s and just before turning East on the river proper my River to Sea lure was taken and a short fight later I boated a 39cm Big Eye Trevally. I decided to troll the area to see if I could pick hop another and 2min later lost one as I failed to set the hooks properly. I trolled around the Munna Point area for another 10min but no further action except that it had started to rain quite heavily.
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| 38cm Trevally will make a nice Sunday lunch |
I decided to do a few drifts near Ricky’s as part of my ongoing efforts to try and land a fish on a soft plastic. I dropped the gladiator prawn in and the drift seemed to be going well as I could feel the lure softly banging on the sand ridges on the bottom and every now and again I’d give it a jerk. I’d drifted all the way to the sand banks without a touch. I redeployed the R2S and headed for the mouth and was immediately onto something substantial which put up a big fight. Unfortunately it turned out to be the dreaded Hair Tail. I boated this as rightly or wrongly I’ve decided to take a few of these out of the system as it’s seemed pretty thick with them over the last coupe of years.
I carried on toward the mouth with the tide sweeping me down very quickly. I’m not sure if the run-out is always this fast, but it seemed particularly quick. I crossed the mouth channel in my usual pattern heading diagonally across to the fishing platform on the South Side. Half way across the yak hit a sand bar and I struggled a bit to get over it. Once over I was in the even faster flowing main channel which s only 6-8m across and I was thinking to myself that it would not be good to hook up here as I’d be dragged out to the bar very quickly. Just as the thought was exiting my brain to wherever thoughts go, I heard a big thump on the line. I grabbed the reel and started winding hard. Luckily I had some heavy gear on and could wind pretty much as hard as I liked. It was difficult to tell how fast I was going out toward the bar as I was going backwards with the rock wall on my left and the fish on my right, but out of the corner of my eye I could now see cars and bright lights. It’s hard to tell time either, but I guess I’d managed to get the fish boat side in under 2 minutes and could see a large silver shape that resembled a Jew Fish. I didn’t have time to muck around with lip grips and I couldn’t gaff it as I couldn’t tell if it was legal size or not, so I'd just have to heave it and hoped the hooks didn’t pull. They didn’t and I got the fish into the hatch at which point I got a very unexpected round of applause and 'whoops' from my new fans on the rock wall and car park.
By this time I was almost at the Life Guard tower and I now paddled like mad to get into the calmer waters near the fishing platform. As soon as I was out of the main channel I checked the chart to see if it was a river Jew or a Black Jew and it seemed like a Black Jew to me [correction - the fish is neither River nor Black Jewfish but a Mulloway or Silver Jew Fish - thanks Aussie Stew]. A quick measurement had the fish around 70cm, maybe 72cm, but not 75cm, so it had to go back. I took a quick snap and let it go.
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| 70cm Silver Jew fish caught in the river mouth rock wall channel on a HBL |
I did a few more laps after that but nothing more so I decided to head back to Ricky’s. Going back against the tide was hard going. At Ricky’s I gave the softies another crack but again no luck. I spotted some lighting off to the North so decided to pack it in and had the yak back o the roof around 12.30am. And thus ended another fun night on the Noosa River.
Seems the one thing in common for both excellent nights I’ve had on the river is rain. Just coincidence or is there something in that?
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