Fishing Victoria Forum

We had the 2020 North Shore Challenge over in Portland for the long weekend. To cut a long story short I caught SFA all but a few people got kings which along with tuna are the main targets for the comp.

My tactic was to troll a Zman Heroz, a dead garfish, and a small white soft plastic whipbait. Unfortunately it turned out the kings were only interested in very fresh squid (of which I had none). The only thing interested in the garfish was a couta which was definitely not on the species list for the comp. I was still pretty happy with the way the dead gar swum, there was a thread with details of how I rigged it but it unfortunately vanished off the face of the forums for some reason...

It was still a fun weekend away, there's starting to be a fairly tight group of kayakers who get into this sort of offshore fishing and it was good to catch up with a few guys I hadn't seen in a while. The day after the comp I was pretty determined to not leave without a kingfish and I ended up paddling about 35km from one end of the North Shore area to the other and back again looking for fish but it was all in vain. I had planned to fish on the Tuesday after the comp as well but I was pretty rooted after the effort on Monday so I packed up and went home early.

Some shots of the comp by the organiser:






I'm still getting the hang of this knockoff gopro so some of the shots are a bit **** still

The couta hooked up on my gar


...and the aftermath - half a garfish isn't going to catch much


Some nice conditions for paddling. It wasn't always like that unfortunately, and in the end the comp area was restricted a bit because of high winds

Oh wow, nice condition off shore.
You mentioned 35km. How far the others or normally you got to paddle to get to the kingfish/tuna?
As much as I want to get a tuna/king, I dont want to paddle 35km off the beach offshore with my Slayer10. Lol.

We weren’t that far from land the entire time, most of that distance was paddling from one end of the north shore to the other. Kings were in about 6m which is anywhere up to a couple of km from the beach if you knew exactly where they were. On a nice day you could do it in the slayer, I took the slayer 13 last year

4liters wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 30, 2020 5:44 am

We weren’t that far from land the entire time, most of that distance was paddling from one end of the north shore to the other. Kings were in about 6m which is anywhere up to a couple of km from the beach if you knew exactly where they were. On a nice day you could do it in the slayer, I took the slayer 13 last year

Thanks.
Mine is Slayer 10. On a nice day, surely I can go to 6m water.
When is the best time to get them?
The usual : summer, 20°C water temp, dusk/dawn, high tide change?
Keen to get my first kingfish, even if its just a rat.

You could do it on a calmer day with low winds and swell.
The wind did pick up both days with headwinds. Sunday had winds gusting up to 22Kts but was manageable in a bigger yak but not in your 10' yak.

The kings should be around till end Feb- early March depends on water temp and clarity but I'm not the expert.

I'll add my run this year at NSC 20

My day started out ready on the beach for a 6.30 am start after safety gear and radio checks and only 5 min off the beach got my first action - trolling squid strips on 6/0 40gram jigheads my first 15 kg set up hooked up and fish dropped then the second rod was on so just dropping the first rod back in the rod holder with the bait tea bagged I pulled my first fish got it in the net and the first rod buckled - this picked up 2 salmon 46 and 44 cm and as we could enter 2 of each species this was a good start to day one

Very little happened over the next couple of hours except the wind was getting a little nasty and the Admin kept us updated with the base wind speed that kept sneeking up closer to the cut off Max for the comp ( 17 kt base wind max ) it was getting a little breezy around Minerva Reef I trolled my way back toward Nuns back down the coast to an area with some more protection from some cliffs trolling in 5 meters of water ( all the Kingfish action had been quite shallow ) I got 1 hit and apart from a small run on the drag just lost a bait with no hook up

trolling back over the same track didn't do any thing and later I found a King was caught not long after that in 3 meters this may have been the school that got my bait

with the wind increasing and getting closer to the cut off I anchored up and pulled a couple of small but size snapper to help my point score along and day 1 was called an hour early due to wind


Day 2 has a comp inside that comp called the second day dash - this time on the beach we get a nominated species and fish one in win that section - the morning species was KG Whiting
I thought I'd give that a go first and anchored on a likely spot after a lot of small but size snaps got my first Whiting a quick radio to Admin and non entered so a pic with my number tag was sent - that picked me up a nice set of Mako sunglasses ( about $ 300 worth )
and the snaps were bigger than the day before so an upgrade

While at anchor I did get hooked up to Ian (4liters ) as he trolled past but he did a good job and hooked all 3 lines I had out

then it was trolling again with 1 squid strip bait and one live yellow tail scad ( picked up while at anchor )
that was purely paddling exersize as no more fish wonted to play


With a good catch of minor species I got enough points to pick up 4th - my partner in the teams event Mal also picked up Snapper Whiting and salmon and we picked up runners up in the teams - this is the best results for ether of us @ Portland which can be hard work


all the kingfish caught were quite shallow and the tuna didn't come in to play this year -- still a great event bring on NSC2021


https://seasherpa.com.au/pages/north-sh ... lenge-2020


https://seasherpa.com.au/pages/results