Raper Shoal, 19Nov10

Subject: Fishing 19Nov11
From: "brian"
Date: 19/11/2010 7:55 PM

Hi all,

Decided to head to Raper Shoal and fish "locally" due to time constraints. Google earth told me the shoal was approx 4kms away from my launch point.

After mistiming the shore break I got sorted out and started off, water depth remained about 15mtrs and pretty featureless until I got about 1km away from my destination where it gradually rose to about 10mtrs. (no bird/surface activity at all)

As I neared my destination I discovered my first problem of the day - between myself and my mark (scrounged from the net) there was a very large swell pushing through, even though I was over 1.5kms from land, and to make matters worse every couple of waves were breaking. The reason for this I found out later as the swell backed off a bit, was that at the shallowest point of the shoal it was only 3.7 metres deep.

The drift was nearly 2kms p/hr to the North and fishing was hard, especially in a new location with very different conditions to my usual haunts at SR.

After half an hour of dedicated fishing time the only sign of life was a rather large squid following my pilchard on the retrieve. It turns out the squid was smarter than I and won its freedom.

With half an hour left I finally hooked up to a good fish only to have my jighead snap. Have already lost a bit of gear due to the unfamiliar shallower reef structure.

I was beginning to think I should've stayed at home.

While retrieving my SP I got another good hit and this time stayed connected and line started peeling off as the fish took off in all sorts of directions, which had me completely puzzled as to its identity. Needless to say I skilfully (NOT) landed the fish and despatched it to the hull.

Having a fish on board I decided enough was enough for my first mission and set paddle for the awaiting sand monster. No sooner than I'd paddled 50mtrs than the SP that I was dragging behind went off resulting in a nice healthy 55cm snapper coming on board! (my first on the troll)

Uneventful paddle back and avoided the sand monster (just). No bikini clad girls on Moffats - just wrinkly tourists today!

pic missing in action
launch site @ moffat beach - nasty shore break pic doesn't really do it justice.

pic missing in action
After checking size/bag limits at home found out that the kingfish was 5cm under size and as this is not a species I've caught up here before I actually thought the size limit was 50cm. I'm now going to print off & laminate a small card from fisheries web site & keep on the yak.

cheers brian