Wind: gentle NNW
Swell: small E, insignificant
Water temp: 25.6°C
Current: at Jew Shoal from W to E
Launch point: Middle Groyne
Participants: sunshiner
Keen Angler Program: No frames donated
Weather looked perfect when I woke to the kookaburras around 05:30. Checked Seabreeze on the iPad. Yep, light winds. Should I go out? Had made no preparations last night though. But I did need to test my revised camera mount. Bugger it, I'll go.
By 06:15 I was afloat and paddling into the small northerly chop left over from last night's stiff breeze. Few if any clouds so the sun was already making its strength felt and the glare reminded me why in summer we start really early, usually long before sunrise.
Hung out the Qantas HLP 120 and headed for Jew Shoal. Two dolphins cross my path, surfacing first on the port side then the starboard. No birds in sight, no surface splashing. Other than a charter boat hanging around to the east, possibly trolling in circles, and that jet ski fisher again, I had Jew Shoal to myself. Having arrived about 07:15, I trolled for a while then chucked around an SP for a while (wondering if the snapper reported by Doc Dog yesterday were in transit) and then started to troll again. Two items of interest today.
Firstly, I noticed many fast flying birds passing over the shoal heading north. Clearly they weren't sea birds but equally clearly they seemed competely comfortable swooping and soaring over the ocean. At one point a couple of them passed directly over me with barely a metre clearance, like tiny jet fighters, but soundless. I thought they might be members of the swift family except that these were quite a lot bigger than the swallows and swifts I normally notice.
Probably this is what they were: Pacific swift, which migrates from Asia. Any bird experts out there? Image from Google.
Another item of interest was a dark patch on the surface which appeared on my port side as I was trolling. Whatever it was, it was just below the surface, making a small ripple as it travelled. It was travelling slower than I and in the same direction but as I got closer I could see it was a large eagle ray, with a white pattern on its darker upper surface and a white belly. The eagle rays have an obvious "nose" which is a good way of identifying them.
Spotted eagle ray. I sourced this image on the Internet.
The ray did not seem intimidated by my presence, but casually turned through 90° across my path in front of me then submerged.
Back to the fishing. I'd done the required testing with my camera mount and was happy to return the beach, even without fish. It was now about 08:45 so I set off for Middle Groyne from the northern side of the shoal, trolling all the way. Doctor Dog got his Spaniard yesterday just after he'd left the shoal, on the southern side. I have noticed that the first 500m or so after leaving the shoal, heading south, is where you are most likely to get a strike and so it was today, with my HLP going off with a fast run. Looking behind I saw a brilliant flash as the hooked fish pulsed through the water at speed. Probably a mackerel, I thought, and sure enough, my first spotty mac of the season appeared yakside.
Frame from movie.
There was no further action on the way to mg and no sign of surface activity. But clearly the macks are here. What more evidence do you want?
Back on the beach.
86cm. I hear there are some bigger spotties around so wouldn't be surprised if our record 99cm spotty mac gets knocked off in the next couple of months.
Kev Long
Sunshiner
Author Kayak Fishing Manual for iPad and Mac (click linked text to view)
Stealth Supalite X, yellow/orange
Swifts do turn up here from time to time - and if the white rump is as your example bird has shown then it is indeed the Fork Tailed Swift or Apus pacificus sp.
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