Subject: fishing today -- 09jun09
Date: Tuesday, 9 June 2009 5:07 PM
Magnificent weather greeted us today. Jaro had made the call and Harry, Jim, Steve and I answered it, making five starters, four of whom met at the doggie beach car park at 0630. Steve came along a little later.
All got out safely and relatively dry. While we were setting up our gear "out the back" I was struck by the grandeur of the scene so took this pic of Harry backgrounded by our home village of Sunshine Beach and the setting full moon.
A few minutes later we were paddling toward the rising sun, to the edge of the massive Sunshine Reef which here comes within 2km of the beach.
The further we paddled out, the more influential became the breeze, which was steady at about 10 knots from the WNW. Within 20 minutes I was on my chosen drift, popped out the drogue and sent a soft plastic on its journey toward the unseen reef, 27 metres below the surface. Jim then called me on the radio to announce the capture of a small shark on his deep-trolled pilchard bait.
It wasn't long before the action started for me -- about 15 minutes, I reckon. My jig head right at the deepest part of its journey, directly below the kayak, was picked up quite gently by what I thought was a sweetlip, but which turned out to be a quite nice snapper -- a good start to the day!
30 minutes passed, then, on my second 500m drift, the jig was picked up once more and the culprit was soon revealed to be a 43cm grass sweetlip (aka lipper, locally). This was a pleasing addition to the swag as my wife and I eat quite a bit of fish and consider sweetlip to be no slouch on the dinner plate and at least as good as snapper.
45 minutes later the jig was picked up once more, this time a better snapper.
This was the extent of the action for me today, but I hung around, enjoying the scenery and the company of my yak fishing mates. Then the whales turned up. I was chatting to Harry and keeping a weather eye on Jaro who was a good 500m away to the east, when I spotted first the cloudlike puffs indicating whale exhalations, then a huge tail which reared from the surface. Simultaneously with the sighting Jaro came up on the radio and reported that he too had seen the whales and that they appeared to be heading straight for him. And they did.
Jaro afterwards breathlessly told us of the suspense as the pod of three humpbacks swam straight toward him with one of the whales passing on the surface no more than a paddle's length away. Fortunately it chose to pass on his lee side as his fishing lines were trailing on the windward size. Imagine the chaos if one of his lines had been entangled in one of those gigantic "pectorals".
Jim having pulled the pin earlier, Harry and I held out until 1130, when we headed back to pay our dues to the Sunshine Beach sand monster. Steve followed not much later but Jaro held out for a couple of hours more and finished up with the only other fish for our group today, a parrot fish, pic below.
Let's go again soon, Jaro. Weather's looking great.
video for this trip
Kev
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