Botany Bay & Georges River - Jan 2010

After months of nagging, I finally convinced Gary Brown to ditch the dirty filthy stink boat and join me in a kayak session to find out what true angling is all about! We launched off Silver beach at Kurnell and were greeted with a calm but overcast day.

Gary was a little apprehensive at first and asked a few times if he'd get wet. 'Only if you fall in,' I said. Gary's only other experiences in a similar size craft were two trips in a canoe a few years ago. Both of these ended up with Gary in the drink, so he was hoping not to make it three out of three.

Once in and out on the water, I gave him the run down on the Mirage Drive and the rudder and we quickly moved off to the HWO. The wind was up a little bit but Gary quickly got the hang of it and after 10 minutes without a touch, we moved out to The Sticks. Here we started using smaller SP's: Berkley 3" Bass Minnows (pearl watermelon) and Gulp 2" Shrimps (pepper) rigged on 1/16th TT jigheads.

We quickly landed a few reddies before Gary lands his first legal (just!) fish from a yak - a fiesty Botany Bay Trevally. I had to catch up quickly and hooked up to something that felt very decent. A few good runs and strong surges had me calling it for a treavlly too, but when she came up she'd turned into a nice fat Bream. 37cms fork length and Garys trevally now looks like a tiddler.

We manage another two bream and another trevally before heading back in. Gary said that surprisingly, it was a quite enjoyable morning and nowhere near as bad as he thought it may be. So will he sell his power boat? I don't think so!

The next day I took Lachlan out but the wind picked up so we were only out for 30 minutes. This was enough time for him to land his first ever trevally which we picked up while trolling a couple of Ecogear SX40's. He played it out perfectly and was chuffed at getting a new type of fish. Back on the beach he reminded me about eight times how I didn't catch anything. Cheeky bugga!

After that, we had a few sessions on the Georges River chasing bream and flathead. The bream were about but once again, the flathead eluded us. Well, we did get a few small ones but the bigger specimens have been decidely quite for me this summer. Apart from the big girl I got a few weeks ago, of course.

The bream all fell to HB's, with Jackall Chubbys (shallow divers) and the SX40s being the weapons of choice. Lachlan hasn't quite got the hang of casting just yet but it wont be long before he's got it under control.

I snuck out one morning for a quick trip by myself and managed to find a few bream, this time all on SP's. The main fish of note was taken from a boat hull on a Gulp 2" Shrimp (banana) and really had the gear stretched to it's limit. Twice I had the rod tip right down in the water to keep the line from rubbing on the boat hull. She went 39 cms total length and was easily over a kilo. Back she went and I hope she comes back to me during the Squidgy Comp Georges River round in a couple of weeks time.

On the way back I changed to a blade, hoping for a flattie or two but the final fish of the day was another bream, this one going 35 cms total length. Please, please, please let me get fish like these in the comp!

On Saturday the 21st January it's the St Georges Basin round for the ABT/Hobie Kayak Bream tournament. Visit http://www.hobiefishing.com.au/ or http://www.bream.com.au/ for more details. From reports I've heard, there have been lots of fish about with some absolute horses amongst them. I can't wait. Happy yakkin', everyone!

cheers,

Cid

Micks Bassday

Mick and I decided to head out again on Tuesday, a bit of a celebratory trip for Mick's birthday.

Well the small ones started early as per usual, but it was much slower than out last trip, the bass basically wanted the fly to sit dead still for about 30 seconds before they would go near it.

I'd just finished building a small fly rod to use in the kayak, my 9 foot rod was just too hard to handle when trying to land the fish, so I got an old rod and some bits of old broken beach rods and started to create a nice rod around 6'6". I flounder with the size difference at first but once I got into the rythym I was soon extremely happy with my new creation.

We worked the banks for a while for a few small fish before Mick hooked up to a nice fish around 29cm, from here they just got bigger for Mick with a 32cm fish coming about 15 mins later.

We decided to swap banks and we worked the shady hole under the trees, sometimes we could even sight cast our fish and sit quietly in the kayak until the fish decided to eat the fly.

The action slowed a little and it had been about 1 hour since I'd had any hits, while Mick was still catching the odd small fish it wasn't until we drifted up the river into a nice shady hole that the fish came on again.

I'd just called out "I'm on" when Mick also hooked up, this time it was a nice fish around 350cm and Mick was grinning again. It wasn't the 400 plus he was looking for, but it was still a nice fish and it was good to see him smiling on his birthday.

We fished for a while, with still more 25cm fish hitting our flies, it was at this point that I thought Mick had caught his birthday present until he called out again "I'm on", it wasn't a big fish, but when you love your bass as much as Mick, to see a tagged fish and be able to record the details, it topped off a great morning fishing.

Happy Birthday Mick

Cheers,

Fordy

Flying Bass

In Carl's last report he said "it's been a long time" since he went bass fishing, with a crazy year for me on the work front and the trout streams around Lithgow getting a fair go, it's certainly been a long time since I did any decent kayak fishing.

I've been looking forward to catching up with my good mate Mick Munns for a while now and after he and Carl did so well on the bass we planned to hit Penrith for a morning session on Sunday 27th December.

What a top morning we had, the rain held off but the overcast conditions meant that the annoying waterskiers and site seeing boaties had gone to the movies or shopping the post Christmas sales instead.

Within the first few casts Mick was on, not a big fish but it was the surface strike we were looking for. I tried a few different surface lures but the hits kept coming on Mick's HSJ flies and soon after I started fly casting a louder hit came and I was on to a good fish in the late 300s. It was a long battle with the fish burrying me in the weed and when I finally got him near the Yak and reached for the net, he spat the hooks and swam away. A shower of bleeps rained from my mouth and I turned to see Mick filming every second of my disaster. He turned away and chuckled to himself as he started casting again.

Soon we decided to change sides of the river and I was rolling my line in under some heavy cover and pulling out fish after fish, problem was they were all around 25cm and not really impressive by anyones standards.

I rolled another cast and heard Mick call out "This is a much better fish", I flicked my fly out to the centre of the river and paddled up to see what was going on. Mick had the net hidden next to him, but I could tell he was trying to hide his smile and he lifted the net to reveal a beautiful bass coming in at 41.5cm. After a quick photo session, he released it back to it's snaggy home and we fished for a few more small ones before returning to the ramp.

It was a top morning and it's certainly re-ignited my passion for bass fishing and I'm keen to improve on my fly fishing techniques from the Yak.

Anyway's it's off to the tying table now to make some more HSJs before our next session on Tuesday the 5th January.

Cheers,

Fordy