From: "LeRoux Uys"
Date: 12/12/2010 10:29 PM
G'day everyone,
Well, the weatherman got it wrong again and it was the combination of this, cabin fever and the fact that my wife, Linda has been nagging me for snapper for the past couple of months that made me venture out today...
I had returned fishless from my past 3 yaxpeditions despite spending the time out there and trying just about every bait and lure known to man. After recently reading about Kev and Jimbo's snapper successes and staring out of my window all morning without seeing a leaf move (whilst it was supposed to be blowing it's hole out from the NE!!) I decided 'that's it, I'm going out there'. I tried to coerce Stu into joining me, but he was too busy playing with his joystick on someone else's X-box... enough said!!
Needless to say it was pissing down all day and I made peace with the fact that I was going to get wet, very wet! At least parking at MG wasn't a problem and the paddle (in and out) was a doddle. I headed straight for the pinnacles as this is where most of the action had been over the past week and I could already taste pan fried snapper on my way out...
My paddle was diverted by bird activity, heaps of it (have I told you I like birds...) and I spent the first hour or so out there chasing down schools of bonito and mac tuna that were being ferociously pursued by all kinds of sea birds - unfortunately they were uninterested in my trawled Halco as well as my little silver that I repeatedly kept casting at them. That's it! I eventually decided and settled into trawling a floated pilchard and doing a bit of bottom bashing whilst at it, coming up with only small squire...
All of a sudden the reel holding my trolled pilchard went off, followed by some aerial activity and a couple of big splashes; I couldn't identify what was at the end of my line as a result of the weather and the distance it was away from me and for a moment I thought I had hooked a small black marlin, however this turned out to be the mother of all long toms - probably around 150cm!! After releasing this beast (had to cut it off - some impressive dentures at work there!) I set up again and thought I'd place myself near the pinnacles once more. There was still heaps of surface activity all around, but I thought more of the same - bonito and Maccy's. It was then that my reel screamed again, this time with more urgency and when I picked up the rod I realised that I had connected with something solid, and I immediately thought it was a big mac tuna. But this fellow stripped off some line and immediately went deep, so my thoughts wandered to longtail... perhaps?? The fight went on for quite a while, most of the time me just hanging on and keeping tension on the line - I knew that if it were a biggish tuna I was in for a bit of a battle. Then all of a sudden the line went reasonably slack as the critter headed upward and for a moment I thought I had lost it, but another couple of circular runs saw this fellow appear next to the yak; the gaff went in without any issues and a couple of swings from my tree wood saw him safely on board - went 114cm, but only a runt at 10kg, almost felt guilty for keeping him - NOT!!
It's probably cause it's early in the season and they still have a lot of eating to do before they start packing on the weight. Any case, got a bucket load of fillets from it and a couple of those went straight into the pan with some black pepper and lemon juice tonight - beautiful!
Sorry I tried to compress the picture so that I could include it in the text, but no can do...
Here's to a great season, see you out on the water soon!
Tight lines
LeRoux
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