I took yesterday off to do a few chores at home before my wife and I head off to Egypt.
However, there was a small weather window early in the morning so I decided to go for a quick fish down at Hillarys.
Fortunately,the weather window stayed open and I ended up staying out fishing for 10 hours.
The following is an account of why that happened and why my wife put me in the dog box.
As I said earlier, my plan was to head down to Hillarys for a few hours and then to get back to my chores. So I woke up at about 5 am and after dragging on all my wet weather gear, I headed down to the lighthouse on the north wall to fish just before and after dawn.
The currents were unusually strong and a solid easterly was blowing, so it wasn't ideal conditions, but I did manage to catch two skippy, one fairly small, one very decent.
With the wind starting to really pick up I decided to move to the area between the Restaurant and the Yacht pens to see if anything was happening. An unweighted mulie and a variety of soft plastics only attracted the attention of the blowies. The wind was continuing to blow pretty strong from an easterly direction - and as I had had been there for a few hours, I thought I should head home and do my chores.
Fat chance. With that wind blowing, the conditions were pretty good for fishing off the main wall.
One of the great things about an early morning fish at Hillarys is that there are plenty of places to go for a quick bite to eat. So I dropped into the local Gloria Jeans for a couple of fruit muffins and a cup of coffee to warm me up. I don't think the staff there knew what to make of me as I was covered from head to toe in water proof gear (they had predicted heavy showers all day)and was more than likely giving off an odour of slightly thawing mulies.
Anyway, after that top up, I headed out to one of my favourite spots opposite Boy in a Boat reef.
The weather gods were still smiling, but after about a couple of hours of throwing different baits out I was starting to think I had better go home and do my chores - or maybe I should try some soft plastics.
I was going through my box of sps deciding what would work best when zzzzzzzzzzzz, the line on my 10 foot rod starting peeling off. I jumped up and set the hook and the creature on the other end kept heading west. However, my Stradic did its job and after a pretty solid fight I had a sizeable stingray up to the rock wall. I am not a great fan of stingray flaps, so I cut the line as close to the hook as I could and let it swim off. Well that livened up the day.
I was starting to re-rig that line when my other rod, which was rigged up for throwing unweighted half mulies went off.
I set the hook. Same story. The creature (which I could see quite clearly was a much bigger ray) headed west. I knew I was in trouble as I only had 20 lb leader on and this ray was heading straight for the reef. Ping, goodbye ray.
By this time, there was no way I was heading home to do chores.
I re-rigged my gear, and thought that should be the last of the rays. Unfortunately not. I had managed to grab a rock crab and borrowing (stealing) from Spess' great idea of rigging them up on soft plastic jig heads, I threw one out on my lighter rig and sat back and hoped a pink snapper might come along. Unfortunately not. About an hour later,zzzzzzzzzzzz, my line headed west and there it was - another huge ray heading straight for the reef - Stingrays 2 - Colin 1.
Soon after that I noticed a small school of Buff Bream move into my burley trail. These looked quite sizeable - but after tangling with the rays I thought maybe I should try something a bit smaller. I rigged up with a sp jig head, put on small peeled prawn and tossed it out. A few reasonable bites, but no hook ups.
So I grabbed the smallest jig head I had and tried that out.
Threw out the prawn, watched the big Buff race out from the rocks - bang I was on. I had the drag on my new Sustain fairly tight and managed to hold the fish up for a bit, but with rocks everywhere around him he soon cut me off.
That was fun - so I rigged up again. A couple of casts, then bang, I am on again - but even with my drag tightend down some more it was under the rocks in a pretty short time. Buff Bream 2, Colin 0.
I wasn't catching any edible fish - but this sure beat doing chores.
Sadly that was about it for the fishing action. I managed one more reasonable skippy - which I returned and then decided to head home - to find my wife steaming and asking why I hadn't done my chores. And I thought the stingrays were looking angry.
How can you explain a fun fishing day to a non-fisherperson. I gave up and swore I would do them today. I better hurry then and stop typing or I will really be in the dog house.
All the best, Colin Hay