Cooks River & Botany Bay - 2/11/08

3 weeks without fishing is crapola! To make up for it, we were hoping the fish would turn it on for us and come out chewing their heads off. The sky was overcast, the tide had just started to run in and the water was up to 20.5 degrees. All signs looked promising. We started off by fishing the Airport Bridge and Terry dropped one right at the start. This was obviously a big mistake as we're sure the little bugga swam around telling all the other fish to be on the lookout.

Bites were few and far between until I finally managed to land my first bream of the day that went 32cm to the fork. But that was it from there so we moved out into the bay to start fishing some of the sand flats.


The action was a little better out here (though not by much) and I managed to get a mixed bag of bream, trevally and a tailor. All the bites were fairly tentative and we couldn't figure it out. Maybe there was still a bit too much fresh in the system and in hindsight, fishing deeper may have been the way to go.

Terry had landed a flathead and I left him to continue along the drop off as I had to head for home. Apparently, just after I'd gone, a small school of tailor busted up but Terry said they were only choppers and there were no legals among them.

To finish off, Terry ended up with 3 nice flatties, all caught on a TN60. And, he also managed an unusual by-catch on the TN60: a squid. The unlucky guy was hooked by one of the trebles in just one of his tentacles. He was soooooo close to getting away. That's life, eh?

I must say that the fishing hasn't been all that great in the Bay lately and I'm starting to wonder if all the dredging that's going on is having an adverse effect on the fish. I'm hoping it's just a slow start to summer and that things will come good any day now. I hope... Happy yakkin, everyone!

cheers,
Cid