I wasn't fooled when I looked out upon the calm seas from the boat ramp at Woody Head today, with comforting morning rays shimmering off the water. It looked like perfect conditions. But that's how it looked last weekend to, and well, the fish just didn't cooperate. And even though I did boat a fish today, as well as hooking onto something large and lethargic that towed me around for a short while, pickings were pretty slim once again. The window of opportunity for Holger and I was also pretty slim, having to be back on land by midday. On the water just after 8AM, we didn't get off to such an early start.

Our initial plan was to just head out north into shark bay, find a reef and fish it with plastics, trolling along the way and as always, keeping a keen eye out for bird activity. There wasn't a lot of that today so for the most part we were looking for most of our cues through the sounder. It was when we first stopped over a reef in 8 metres of water that I caught some kind of cod (swiftly released) and soon after hooking onto what I suspect was a turtle (most likely it's shell - it didn't fight as much as it did just tow me along leisurely). It dragged me around for a short while before the lure broke free when I put on enough pressure. Although I didn't know it at the time, whatever I'd hooked was only a few metres under the yak when it bust off. Had I gone a little easier I would have got it a little higher and at least seen what it was.

We made the mistake of moving away from here soon after (distracting by something jumping in the distance) and later decided to try around the rocky outcrops of Woody Head. I was hoping to find a snapper here, but numerous cast towards the edges failed to raise a strike. Giving up here was then decided to troll back to the reef we first visited and then drift back into the landing area. We followed that plan to a T, with the only deviation being an incoming pod of dolphins which I decided to spend some time filming.    

All told we covered some 9km of water in about 3.5 hours, trolling for the most part and otherwise drifting. It was a pretty disappointing result really, but not entirely unexpected. I do think we would have stood a better chance at Sandon, though we both agreed to save that for next weekend. Holger, Doug, Troy myself and perhaps a few others are embarking on a kayak camping expedition into the Sandon river next Saturday. With a planned departure of just after midday, Holger and I are entertaining the idea of arriving on daybreak and paddling out wide to the shoals for a morning session. Next weekend is going to be an interesting one and I think my new tramp is going to come into great use for that. Speaking of which, I've just uploaded a new video with a bunch of clips from the past few weeks fishing, and there's some good footage of the tramps in use (including footage of the incident that made me decide tramps were a must-have addition).

Lures used	Strategies used	Caught
Rapala Magnum CD18	Trolling	Zip
Finn-S Flickbait shad	Casting, trolling & drifting	Cod
Storm hollowgraphic worm	Casting & drifting	Zip
Rod used	Reel used	Line used
Innovator Nitro Godzilla	Diawa Freams KIX 4000	50lb line, 50lb leader
Innovator Nitro Viper	Diawa Certate 3500HD	30lb line, 50lb leader
Innovator Nitro DistanceSpin	Diawa Team Advantage 2500	20lb line, 20lb leader

 

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