Fresh from his unexplained absence last Saturday morning, due to late night computer gaming, where we had a really good day on the water, YPM bounced out of bed at 4.45am yesterday morning for the monthly MAAC competition.  He has picked up the Juniors prize for the last 4 months and was pretty keen on fishing the last comp before the ban to see what he could add to his yearly points tally.  He was also inspired by my discussion of being “bricked” by a big dhu at the spot we had planned to head to first and had been planning how he was going to catch it.  Even to the point he made a few rigs just for this pursuit.

With the wind being a bit “suspect”, we made the decision to go out early once it was determined that sea conditions were ok.  You can’t leave the marina until 6am so we got to our spot a bit later than you normally would and really a bit late for the morning pinkie run.  The bite was fairly slow and we boated a few undersized pinks and a few undesirables before I had a screaming run on the floater.  It was hooked up and for the first minute or so hopes were high until the characteristic fight of a big ray was observed.  Tighten up the drag and it was probably a good thing it busted off after about 5 minutes – you can waste so much time on the mongrels.

Not long after we were greeted to the squeal of YPM’s drag as something big took his carefully prepared snelled paternosta with whole squid and bonito slab cocktail.  This fish had a lot of power and there was great disappointment when it clearly went under a rock in brick mode.  YPM let the line loose and periodically put the heat back on to see if it had come out.  I reckon the technique where we rig the sinker with much lighter mono might have paid off because I think the sinker broke off and the fish came free.  YPM had clearly got it off the bottom and proceeded to play it to the surface.  It was pretty exciting when we saw colour and the big dhu popped to the surface.  Our net broke trying to fit it in and in a selfless act, Dean plunged his hands into its gob and hauled it aboard giving blood for the team.  You have never seen a young fella as happy to get his prize.

Not long after, he also got a 1.5m wobby to the boat which was a little disappointing as they fight in a similar way to the due and we thought he may have had another one – it would have had to be released anyway.  Apart from that the fishing was fairly slow so we headed south into the wind to try some other spots that had produced for us lately.

Brought out the last bag of burley from the huge batch we made a few months ago and set up.  There was not much action until the burley started to work and we were surrounded by big schools of hungry sambos.  It became mayhem as the sambos were on the chew to the point that we couldn’t get anything we hooked on the bottom past them.  As it was comp day, and we have a marathon burley making session set up for next weekend we kept a few but mostly it was about catching the big angry fish on the light gear as it is really good sport.  A highlight was throwing a half filleted herring out and drawing the hungry sambos right to the boat where they were trying to smash it on the surface right next to us – we could have gaffed them if we wanted. 

Then, YPM hooked up on an absolute freight train that looked like it was going to spool the 30lb braid.  This one seemed much bigger than the rest and after about 25 minutes of torture for YPM we had to fire up the outboard to chase the fish and managed to get about 100m of line back.  I must say the young fella handled himself fairly well and our only input was a few words of advice about not going too hard and moving things out of the way as it ran him around and around the Hornet – showing again the benefits of having this type of boat to try and land big fish on light gear.  After 40 intense minutes we finally saw colour, and what a horse it was.  A great relief to get it onboard for the young one after putting so much effort in.  There was no way he could hold the fish up for the photo and its weight went past our 50lb scales.

We moved on to try and get a few other species with captures of pike and sand whiting.  To top off his day on the water, YPM managed to troll up a tailor and pike around a nearshore reef at the end of the day.  No doubt he was likely to score a few points with that bag and he was really tired but keen to get to the weigh in.  I think the grin in this photo says it all.

A few trips were required to get all the fish to the scales.  Then dhu went 10.4kg and the sambo 26.7kg.  At the end of the weigh in, the board revealed that YPM had won the seniors, juniors, biggest dhu, biggest sambo and we had come runners up in the doubles (clearly I let the team down).  The MAAC fishermen are really a talented bunch of good blokes and for a 14 year old to win the singles is an effort he will remember forever.

Our final bag is below (you can only weigh in one sambo though).  The bite was not as strong as other recent days but yesterday was a victory for youth and something that will stay with him for the rest of his life.

Image Upload: