Cooks River Report – 28/10/06

I was looking at my fishing diary the other day and noticed that at about this time last year, the Cooks River really started to fire on the bream front. It’d been a while since I’d had a really good bream session so with Seabreeze predicting 15-20 knot winds from about 6am, I decided to give the planned attempt for kingies a miss and instead see if the Cooks could deliver.

At 5am I launched from the small ramp off rd and the conditions were perfect. Not a hint of wind or a ripple on the water. I had about and hour until low tide so I was hoping to get a few before the flow stopped. Armed with my 7ft pflueger rod and president reel loaded with 4lb fireline, I flicked 1/16 oz jig heads rigged with cut-in-half 6” Sandworms in Camo. There were no takers from under the boats in the shallows but as I approached the main channel and the water deepened, on one of my casts I saw the braid twitch as the SP sank. I lifted the rod and came up tight on my first for the day: 27cm to the fork and only 15 minutes from launch. Lovely!

I landed one more a few boats later and then decided to hit the flats between the road bridge and the railway bridge. Now this is where my sounder really pays for itself and mine isn’t even one of the top of the range beauties that are so affordable now. I purchased my Eagle Cuda 168 about a year ago and it really opened my eyes (literally) to a whole new world previously unseen.

I pedaled slowly and watched the sounder screen change from the constant 1.3 meters to a quick increase in depth to 4.7 meters. Along this slope I could see fish suspended just off the bottom so I went back to the start of the drop off and flicked my SP up-current and slowly jigged it back. Over the next 30 minutes until the current stopped, I landed another two legal bream (33cm and 30cm fork) as well as 4 just under at about 23-24cm’s plus a couple of small flatties. Man, I wish I’d been here a bit earlier to get more of the run-out.

From here I moved up to the railway bridge to fish the start of the run-in. I love chasing bream around these bridges. You can hook some real horses and you’re never guaranteed to get them away from the line-shredding pylons and you have to be on your toes the whole time. It was a bit difficult keeping position as the wind had now proved Seabreeze right! But I persevered and with the Mirage Drive of the Hobie leaving my hands free to keep fishing, I managed to land four more before my 8am curfew rolled around.

All up I landed 8 keepers (34cm, 33cm, 32cm, 2 x30cm, 27cm & 2 x 25cm). It looks like the Cooks River is gonna fire again this summer. Happy yakkin’, everyone.

Cheers,
Cid