Subject: fishing today -- 26Aug09
Date: Wednesday, 26 August 2009 6:31 PM
This morning the weather was too good for me to ignore. As forecast, the wind had faded to nothing after several days of strong norwesters. A quick recce of surf conditions down at Sunshine Beach confirmed the situation. Glum looking board riders stared wistfully out across a sea with just a tiny NE wave. Perfect for yakkers.
I shot an email out to Noosa yakkers at about 1015 telling them I was going and by 1115 I was sitting out on my mark, 1.5km out from Sunshine Beach with two rods deployed and on the hunt for a fresh snapper. The breeze out there initially was barely sufficient to put a ripple on the surface but gradually the sea breeze kicked in, just enough to power a drift over the reef.
At 1130 I had a hookup on the casting outfit. It lasted all of about ten seconds and the hook pulled free. This was sufficient for me to know that there were fish around and that they might bite. The drift was N-S, very slow -- so slow that I could maintain bottom proximity for several minutes with the 1/4 oz jig in the 30m of water without recasting. At 1215 I eventually boated my first fish, a maori cod of about 35cm (undersize -- released), so you can tell that things were slow. But conditions were magnificent and I had no pressing need to return to the beach.
One of the reasons I was keen to go today was to test a new helmet-based camera mount -- fabricated from a piece of slotted PVC pipe mounted with cable ties (what else?) on a cheap bicycle helmet I'd picked up while doing a litter clean up and hoarded away in my goodies box just in case a need for its services might arise. As things were really quiet I thought I'd go through the procedure of attaching the camera to the helmet and strapping the camera on my head, followed by turning the camera on (by feel) and starting to shoot video (also by feel -- because the camera's on top of my head). Anyway, in preparation for this first-time trial, I laid out a cast with the light casting outfit then went through the helmet camera set up drill, step by step, including turning on the video. This accomplished, more or less as I'd planned, I discovered that my inattention to the light casting outfit had caused it to become reefed. I swore a couple of times, camera running, and started to go through the un-reefing drill when there was a loud buzzing from the trailing outfit. My first thought was that this too was snagged but the line was being removed from the spool far quicker than the drift rate so this had to be a fish. So, one line snagged and the other with a fish on it and the helmet cam is running and needs commentary. What's the drill for this? Make it up as you go along!
A minute or so later, a nice snapper, just under 50cm, lay in the footwell. To make things even better, the snagged jig head unsnagged itself when I applied pressure sufficient to nearly snap the line. Bewdy!
The snapper comes to gaff... Pic courtesy of helmet cam
Helmet cam video of this capture:
Oh, and I marked the spot on the GPS where I'd been snagged and hooked the fish so I was a busy guy for a few minutes (snagged rod, hooked fish, camera running, commentary, mark the spot on GPS). Once I'd tidied up after this frenetic burst, I paddled back upwind of the newly-created mark and deployed weapons again, while watching the GPS count down the distance to the mark. Getting close to the mark I reached up and turned on the camera and then pressed the start button. Pow! Another strike, same place. This action was also captured on video but the snapper was marginally legal so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and released it.
Helmet cam video of second capture:
And then the whale turned up. I was drifting along peacefully when I started hearing whacking noises, such as are generated by a fast moving boat in a swell. There was a moving boat in the distance but I thought it unlikely that the noise could be emanating from it as it was planing peacefully and throwing up no spray. The noises continued and eventually I scanned the horizon and discovered, directly astern (the most difficult place to see from a kayak seat) a whale's tail protruding from the ocean's surface and whacking the surface from time to time, typical tail-slapping behaviour. Of course, I just had to get this on video, so tidied up my fishing gear, turned on the helmet cam and started paddling the several hundred metres toward the tail slapping only to have the whale grow tired of this play and decide to move on. Back to the fishing...
About now I snagged up the light casting outfit and in the process of trying to break it off, managed to break off both the jig head and the last 4cm of the rod tip. @#%^!. As this needed to be repaired before the fishing trip tomorrow I decided to pull the pin and head for the beach. Now it was time to use chest-cam, which you've met before. The swells were small and manageable with practice (and boy have I had some practice) and so I turned the camera on, started the commentary and ended up a very happy chappy right way up on the beach after riding a wave sideways when it ran me down after breaking behind me (the video will be up on youtube as soon as I get the time to edit it).
Leaning into the wave and riding it sideways -- pic courtesy of chest cam
Chest cam video of return to the beach:
My take home snapper
Yak and snapper on Sunshine Beach.
Life's tough
See some of you early tomorrow.
Kev
Red & Yellow Espri, black paddle
VHF channel 09 or 22 (if alone), Call Sign: sunshiner
http://noosayakers.blogspot.com
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