Botany Bay - 28/1/08 & Parramatta River - 3/2/08

Botany Bay - 28/1/08

What else are you gonna do on a public holiday except go fishing? Terry and I looked at Seabreeze the night before and it predicted 9 knot winds early in the morning. Well I reckon if there'd been a Kite Flying Comp on Foreshore Rd that morning they'd have cancelled it for being too windy! Closer to 20-25 knots with 30 knot gusts I'd say. I've never launched from a surf beach before and seeing as we were here we thought we'd give it a shot.

I was just thinking that we'd be lucky if we landed anything in this weather when Terry yells out from the gloom just after his first cast, "I'm on!". Well, just goes to show you what I know... It's not a bad bream at about 30cm's and over the next 30 minutes he lands a couple more, including a 28cm snapper that he thought was going to be really good bream. Then he gets a flattie followed by a small trevally, so the wind is obviously not stopping Terry from getting stuck into them.

The wind would seem to ease off then come back with a vengeance. Finally I get a fish (yay!) and it's a nice 56cm flathead that decideds to join me for dinner. I then target a few marker poles and land 4 bream quickly, but only one is legal at 27cm's. We finally get sick of the weather and being tossed around in a 'washing machine sea' and decide to call it a day. Only 80 minutes on the water in total but we still managed a nice feed and at least I was able to practice my landing skills on a beach with a pounding surf of about 40cm's! : )

Parramatta River - 3/2/08

The final round of the Berkley Summer Series was held in Sydney and Gary and I were teamed up trying to get the best 5 bream we could. We were up against 55 other teams and there were some bloody good fishos amongst them, too. 7am on the dot and the field scatters. Gary and I head upstream to Silverwater and have the best start we've ever had. 3 fish in the well within 40 minutes. Half an hour later I land another but he's badly hooked and unfortunately he goes belly up in the live well an hour later. All fish that are weighed in have to be alive and deemed able to survive by the judges, so it was back to 3 fish for us. The bite had finished by now so we set off back downstream to try the flats.

We tried HB's and SP's and managed a few smaller bream and some nice whiting but nothing to add to the live well. We then moved onto boats and pontoons for a big, fat zippo! The tide was getting towards the bottom and Gary spied a weedbed over some flats. First cast at them and he hooks up. It's a keeper and we only need one more for a full bag. It's starts to rain and Gary looks up and says "You call that rain. Come on, you can do better than that!" and sure enough, he/she did. It absolutely chucked it down. We were fishing away like a couple of drowned rats when I get a solid hit and the line screams off. I pray that it's not another thumper whiting like the last comp and hallelujah, it's not. He's a beauty and is our best so far at 36cm's total length. That's our 5 but the other 4 bream in the well aren't big fish. We need another kicker!

We tried a few more bays and flats and various pontoons but just couldn't get an upgrade. We get back just before 2pm and weigh in. 2.29kg's is our final weight, with the big guy coming in at 830 grams. That bag would've put us in the top ten at Brisbane Waters but not here. We come in at 24th with only 500grams seperating us and 10th place. Surprisingly, there were no really huge fish caught this time, with the Big Bream for the day going 1.09kg's.

So that's it for the Berkley Series until next summer. There are still a few Squidgie rounds to go, with the next one on Port Hacking on the 16th February where Gary and I will once again try to coax these wiley bream into our live well. And if the weather eases off for this weekend, it's back into the yak for me chasing who knows what. Happy yakkin', everyone!

cheers,

Cid