Wind: NE, 5knots
Swell: low NE
Current: at Doggie Beach reef, strong northerly, about 1.5kph
Launch point: Doggie Beach
Participants: jaro, sunshiner
Observations: no turtles, dolphins or whales; no surface action, clear water, near summer water temp
Even though I felt that I was a bit lower on energy than usual (no smart cracks, please) I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by today. Over the past few days the evidence had been building from kayak fishing reports that the snapper and other reefies were definitely biting just before and after sunrise and were less likely to bite the greater the elevation of the sun. Today, with a Doggie Beach launch a possibility, and only a 20 minute paddle out to the nearest decent bit of reef (Doggie Beach Reef) there was an opportunity to test the theory.
Astute readers will quickly understand that testing the theory involves launching well before sunrise, and launching into an open ocean beach break, these both necessary in order to be on the fishing grounds in sufficient time. Hence our 0400 (sunrise: 0449) meeting at the Doggie Beach carpark. So well were our timings coordinated that jaro and I drove into the carpark nose to tail.
Here I noticed something useful. The toilet adjacent to the carpark has outside lights which illuminate the surrounding area very well, presumably all night. This was where I offloaded the yak, onto the grassy area next to the toilet.
I’d been wondering whether we should check out the beach break before offloading, but, as jaro pointed out, we couldn’t see anyway so why bother. Of course, he’s deaf too, so, unlike me, couldn’t hear the crashing of the waves which initially caused me some concern. Between us we have four good legs (one supported by a metal socket) and two good hearts (one having undergone extensive refurbishment some time back), quite enough for the immediate physical challenge. So we dragged our trolleyed yaks down to the smoothed off sand left by the overnight retreating tide, peered into the gloom and pronounced it “doable”, despite the persistent NE breeze.
I’d spent some ten minutes at this very spot one tide cycle (about 12 hours) ago, watching closely how the wave pattern went, reasoning that it was unlikely to be significantly different on the next tide. This observation seemed to hold true and therefore my recce of the day before was perhaps worthwhile. Jaro, however, dragged his yak off to the spot he’d used two full days ago, about 100m further south than my chosen launch point, which was just north of the creek outfall.
Leaving my yak on the beach, I wandered down to jaro to see if there was enough light for a pic. There really wasn’t, but I took one anyway, at 0423.
There was just enough light, increasing by the minute, to be able to see the larger sets of the small waves coming through, and thus to enable a judgement to be made about the effect on the shorebreak, our immediate problem and a common one here at Doggie Beach. As soon as I spotted the lull I launched, crested a couple of small breakers and was very quickly out the back, slightly damp, but in good shape. Time: 0430.
Jaro, I could just see between wave crests, was still up to his thighs in water, on the beach, hunched over in typical style (the hunchback of doggie beach), hanging on to his yak, waiting for a lull. In due course, several minutes later, I could see his paddle blades rising and falling alternately and could rest easy as I knew he was in clean water and heading out to rendezvous with me.
The big advantage of Doggie Beach is that a successful launch from there puts you within 1500m of the edge of massive Sunshine Reef. Soon jaro and I were paddling out, into the swell and chop, slap, slap, Supalite slap toward our marks.
According to the theory, the fish should be present and feeding. By 0500 we were on the spot, the sun now just clear of the horizon and slightly obscured by cloud. Jaro stuck to his plan to use two different baits (pilchard, large prawn) on two different outfits while I opted to use lures only, a big heavily weighted “octopus” on the trailing outfit, and my usual 4 inch soft plastic on 1/4 ounce jighead on my light casting outfit. Depth varied from 19m to 29m. Our drogues stabilised our drift somewhat in the chop and a current propelled us quite quickly over the reef from north to south.
The first thing we noticed was that there was initially no action at all. This led to some concern but soon that was banished, at about 0520, when my soft plastic was seized, the hook did its job and a 50cm snapper ended up in my fishbox.
This made us feel better, especially jaro, who had two juicy baits out which were as yet untouched. In the short time we’d been drifting we’d travelled around 500m south, driven by breeze and carried by current. So jaro after a short further time without success opted to head north back to his original mark and leave me on my drift. Cue snapper #2. Smaller, but a welcome dinner guest at home, this fish also seized the same type of soft plastic as the previous, which chopped the SP in two.
By now I was a long way too far south for comfort and so opted to head back to the start of the drift navigating by following my drift track on the GPS.
On the Tracks display of my GPS you’ll see several or many waypoints clustered into what have become “hot” areas. I’ve been in the habit of marking places I caught fish and over the years these waypoints have been retained as a valuable visual aid on the display (Note: info not for sale). The image below, a shot from my GPS while on water this morning illustrates what I mean. On arrival at a location I can switch to the Tracks display and immediately see locations in the area where I have previously marked fish captures. Drifts can thus be set up to pass through these hot spots. Mind you, just because I’ve caught a fish there in the past doesn’t guarantee that I’ll do so again, but it’s far better than fishing blind.
After a very hard and lengthy (about 45 minute) slog into the current, chop and swell I was back to where I’d started. Jaro had at last caught a snapper on bait and had a couple of bad experiences with gear failure which suggested that sharks may have been in the area. I fished on for a while but also suffered a bite-off. A little later jaro caught a small shark, thus firming the possibility that the other harassments were the work of sharks, so we decided to head for home.
I think that after five years battling this beach break (and coming off second best on many occasions) jaro and I are getting better at it but we never take it casually. Beach pics from today:
And the fish:
And a lady strolling along the beach happily agreed to pose with the fish of the day.
Oh, and what about the theory? It seemed to me that the fish were definitely more likely to hit earlier. Indeed, while we got several hits and could see fish on the sounder after 7:00 am no fish were boated after that time. Conclusion: ’Tis the early yakker that gets the fish (at present), but go fishing anytime you can.
