Wasted opportunities at Woody Head

Author: josh

Category: Trip Reports

Created on Tuesday, 04 January 2011 18:28

Written by Josh

Due to a hand injury taking it's sweet time to heal properly I didn't get out kayak fishing over the New Year period as often as I'd hoped, though I did manage a few hours of fishing time at Woody Head on both Sunday and Monday. I think it would be fair for me to sum up both trips as wasted opportunities, though Sunday produced some of the most exciting sailing I've done in a while. The experience (and footage I got from it) was worth that alone. I did catch a nice pan-sized snapper as well, which fed both myself and Col, who joined me on the water Sunday.

This fish fell for the magic Red Sardine coloured Rapala Magnum CountDown (CD), though not while trolling - I'd just finished casting and was putting the rod in it's holder when I felt something take hold. This solitary lure is what caught almost all my fish at Fraser Island - including the bronze whaler - and it is still in perfect working condition, and still catching fish. Thats why I love the CDs so much - they work perfectly out of the box 100% of the time, they're tough enough to handle a solid chomping and to keep on keeping on. So far this solo lure has handled 3 big trevally, 6 - 7 mackerel, twice as many grinners, one of those ugly cow-tooth bearing toad fish (the biggest and angriest I've ever seen), several bonito, a bronze whaler shark and now this snapper. And look at it! When I look at this photo and think about the fish it's been responsible for, the true value of these lures comes into perspective. 

This turned out to be part of where the wasted opportunity came from. My plan was to try and reach middle reef where I was expecting to find spotted mackerel on masse (and they were there apparently) but I got distracted along the way. First by the massive turtle - which had a head bigger than mine - that allowed me to drift right up to it. In fact the bow actually collided with it's shell (very softly I might add) which tells you how close I got to it.

The bigger distraction came in the form of massive patches of baitfish, me doing my best to entice any predators that I felt sure would be lurking by. I didn't spend too much time trolling, instead opting for a casting strategy, aiming wherever birds were showing most interest at the time. Casting soon started giving my hand grief, so instead I decided to whip out a bait jig, pull out a baitfish or two and give a bit of livebaiting a go. Within a minute I'd extracted the first livebaiting candidates, typically sized bluebait. So I put one on a hook and lowered it down. Checking it a couple minutes later revealed a bare hook, so I lowered down the jig again. This time a couple of yakkas came aboard. I lowered one of those down on a hook, and with great anticipation I waited... and waited... and continued to wait until anticipation waned. 

By then I was feeling way too lethargic to head out to middle reef and my hand was feeling the pinch so I turned tail and came back to land. Ausbass informs me he and his dad bagged out at the reef on spotties that very morning, so my instincts were right at the very least. That and the fact that there were so many baitfish closer in was a very promising sign for the next few weeks and possibly even months. If only we get a string of descent weather to let us make the most of it.