Launched at first light, a bit later than I would have liked because the sounder wiring decided it wanted to break so I had to spend 20 minute using my rusty old fishing pliers to strip some insulation off the remain cable until I had enough exposed wiring to connect to the battery. With the corroded pin on the power plug as well I'm really going to have to put some work into the bloody thing soon before it craps itself somewhere inconvenient.
Looking towards Flinders
I paddled out to about 7m and deployed the arsenal, the first squid fell to a rainbow yama and went straight to the bait esky. That jig was sacrificed to a snag about 5 min later when I wasn't paying attention and drifted into shallow water.
Shoreham beach, with my new fish bag in the foreground.
The next squid was a whopper, I got it on a silver whiting bait on a handline. Bringing it in was a delicate process and took a while, the positive from it was it had no ink left by the time I got it next to the yak because those big ones have made a habit of redecorating the interior of the kayak. The squid prong hit a snag not long after, catching a squid was the kiss of death for my tackle today but I certainly got my money's worth out if it.
I drifted for a little longer but to no avail so I decided to check out a mark I spotted on navionics. It was tricky fishing because there was a big swell coming in through the entrance, which kept lifting the anchor off the bottom, combined with a stiff breeze and a strong tide flow. The anchor ended up dragging, and in the end I just gave up on trying to get it to stick and went along with it. First fish was a yakka, which was promptly cut up into strip baits, the next fish was a really nice gummy, I got it to the side of the yak without any dramas, in fact it was docile enough to sit there while I took photos of it. It didn't appreciate me grabbing it's tail though, it went berserk, dived under the yak and spat the hook.
The gummy, it took a yakka head.
The next couple of fish were a couple of mid 30s flathead, I was dealing with them when one of the snapper rods went off. I thought it was a big pinky at first because it was putting up a fair old fight. Then I saw the elongated body which made me happy, a nice salmon for the bait box. Fair to say I was pretty surprised when the biggest whiting I have ever seen came to the surface, not what I was expecting to take a yakka strip on a 5/0 circle hook. It ended up going 45cm.
PB whiting
By this stage the wind had swung around from the south east and was blowing against the outgoing tide, which made for some pretty uncomfortable conditions for kayaking and almost impossible conditions for fishing so I began the long paddle back. Even worse, the direct route to the beach was perpendicular to the waves which meant a lot of water was coming over the sides.
The beach was pretty crowded when I got back, and someone got there car bogged while retrieving their boat, much to the amusement of a couple of locals. They got it out after a bit of ******* around, but he'll have a lot of salt on the underside of the car.
Tomorrow's dinner. Also got a nice big bag of bait from the scraps and frames for next time.
