Wrote this last night but couldn’t upload photos, and still can’t.  Will upload them when I can.

Headed out again this evening with a couple of mates as the wind was predicted to be less than 10kn. 

Strange conditions but as although a gentle easterly was blowing, the northerly current was very strong to the point that the Minn Kota spot lock has us side on to the wind?  Our floaters were trying to “water ski” so had to be weighted significantly but completely failed to draw any interest.  We had to even “upsize” sinkers to hold the bottom with the “bashers”, even though Minn had us holding the spot.  Fat chance of the burley working in those conditions.

Started with a nice KG and 4 undersized pinkies, including no nuisance fish.  A school of bigger pinks moved through but we dropped both we hooked (very strange pinkie bites up to that point tonight with the fish seeming to suck the baits rather than smash them).

After considering my pinkie baiting strategy over the summer, I really wanted to give the flesh baits a good crack.  I like bonito as a pinkie or bream bait, and caught a few over the summer, so carefully preserved vacuum packed fillets came out.  A good slab on the snelled rig, and within a few minutes a nice pinkie took it - about 650mm and 3.75kg of quality fish.  Back down and 20 minutes later, when another school moved through, a bigger fish took my other type of flesh bait.  This was a feisty fish peeling 50m of line off in an instant given the light drag settings.  700mm and 4kg for another nice fish, and the “classic” was the “visitor” claiming it because he had just lost one from the school that “went to my line”.

Just on the matter of bait, my fishing over the last couple of days has reinforced the need to “change up” baits.  I fished the MAAC comp solo yesterday, “hiding” very close to shore in the morning.  Squid tentacle was the bait of choice for the fish yesterday, but today there was no interest at all.  My “nearshore” bag was ok and It is good to fish where you have to target different species, and get quality bait.  I do like the pinkies best though.