Wind: Cold westerly 5 knots, increasing to 8 knots
Swell: small southerly
Current: at Little Halls Reef, Halls Reef, Jew Shoal, none
Launch point: Middle Groyne
Participants: jaro, stormin, beejay, tarzan, richmond, gemini, whalebait, kahuna, Brock A (need a nickname, Brock), mangrove-mac, sunshiner
Finding fish wasn't easy today, but a couple of nice sweeties ended up in yaks.
In the carpark this morning at 04:30 there was a stranger in our midst. I wandered over to say hello, thinking that it might perhaps be Brock A, whom I hadn't met. No, it was Peter, unloading a Stealth Evolution 465. He'd been reading our blog and had come up from Brisbane on spec hoping to have some of the fun he'd been reading about.
He asked if he could tag along with someone as he had no GPS, no radio and had never launched here before so I pencilled him in as my wingman. Launch was as easy as it gets here and before long Peter and I, alone, were heading for Jew Shoal. Whalebait had opted for Sunshine Reef while the remainder of the contingent headed for Little Halls Reef and Halls Reef.
At Jew Shoal I briefly described the reef to Peter and our various methods of fishing it. We then set up a drift using the westerly wind to push us across the reef. Once again, it was a perfect drift, but once again, the action was almost non-existent. There were no signs of surface activity and no birds hovering over bait patches.
Peter. I invited him to join Noosa Yakkers via the blog link.
Shortly after taking the above pic my SP was taken and I was on! I knew very quickly that it was neither a snapper nor a sweetlip. My judgement was that it was possibly a trevally but after a see-sawing fight of several minutes up popped a small mac tuna. I should have thought of that first, as these are a fairly common catch on SPs at Jew Shoal.
Mackerel tuna
I was dressed for summer but by now I was bloody cold. The wind was cutting through my rashie so I decided to head for Little Halls Reef, 3.7km upwind. I don't know what happened to Peter as he left to troll the Noosa headlands to the SE.
Little Halls Reef was dead, as stormin had warned me by radio a little earlier, but at least it was warm there. Warm and no fish is better than cold and no fish!
After a decent try at Little Halls Reef I decided to head in, encountering a few miniature and brief bustups just outside the river mouth. But as I paddled away from Little Halls Reef I came across a majestic medusa, drifting in the limpid sea.
It was a beauty, about 40cm wide across the canopy.
It was at the river mouth that richmond and gemini caught up with me, an hour or so later as they headed for home. Both had had a bit of action (gemini will do show and tell, later) and we paddled in to the beach together after I took the opportunity to take a pic of richmond's two fish.
The sweetlip went 53cm.
The others mostly came trickling in after us (mangrove-mac had pulled the pin earlier as he was a little off colour). Jaro had eventually managed to bag a very nice sweetlip which he measured and photographed on the beach.
55cm. Nice but not a Noosa Yakkers record.
Whalebait and kahuna were still out there by the time I left so we don't know how they went. Please let us know guys.
Looks like I'm going to have to start fishing with bananas!
Kev
(sunshiner)
Additional material from Gemini
Not a lot to add really. A lot of wildlife today, so there is some footage of that below. The main event was seeing Richmond take a wave while in too close to the North Shore and end up in the drink (he didn't roll the yak at least!). The video doesn't show him falling off, but you can see him climbing back up. Best viewed in HD if possible.
GPS Track
Distance 17.6 km
Max Speed 18.0 km/hour (I think my GPS or Google Earth is crooked)
Avg Speed 3.5 km/hour
Cheers!
Matt (Gemini)
Must be the year for everyone to have a crack at the sweetlip record. Nice fish.
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