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Trip Reports Woody Head, Clarence coast Revenge @ Woody Head | Revenge @ Woody Head | | Print | |
| Written by Josh | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 24 August 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Snapper, bream, cod, flathead, pike, wrasse & sharkWith all lingering signs of a passing winter now fading into obscurity I hit the water with one less body-layer today, opting to leave the Drytop behind. I'd only planned a short trip today but with such nice conditions I was on the water longer than planned, launching at around 10AM and finishing up just after 4PM. In that time I caught a bunch of fish, letting most go unharmed. Action was fairly quiet on the sounder so I spent some time scanning the water with binoculars, looking for signs of bird activity. I found it to, in exactly the same place I saw it last week, about 3km out from shore. I was tossing up whether or not head out to take a look when I started sounding fish. So instead I concentrated fishing about 1.5km off shore, over reefy ground where I'd been finding snapper recently. Not long after I deployed a couple of lines I caught movement at the corner of my eye. A splashing noise drew my attention and looking over I spotted a black fin slice the waters surface, then quickly submerge again. Could have been a dolphin, but I have to admit, it did look like a shark fin. But with my new Shark Shield silently shielding away I really wasn't concerned at all and of course, that was the last I saw of it. Indeed, I was easily distracted from it as I started getting bites there and then. And the biting just went on and on and on. It turned out to be one of those days.  Most fish were pretty small and all but 2 were returned. Among the species caught were flathead, bream, cod, wrasse, pike and snapper. One of the snapper gave a hell of a fight, taking a small sliver of chicken rigged onto a soft-plastic jighead on a light line. A couple more snapper fell for the very same trick, one of which was also kept for the table, another smaller one released to fight another day. Towards the end of the day - right when I was thinking of giving up for the day - a trolled lure was hit hard and taken for a high-speed swim. As I started reeling it in I knew immediately this wasn't a snapper. For sure, it felt much more like a tuna (bigger than any I'd caught before) or maybe a shark. Unable to gain any amount of line on it, the fish was towing me along at an average of 3km an hour, heading east and towards NZ. After about 10 minutes my shoulder started to ache and I wasn't having any success taming the fish. So I decided to pedal towards it and bring in some line the easy way and in doing so, soon got my first glimpse of my quarry. A reef shark by the looks of it, about 5' long at a guess. I was starting to get pretty excited because I was interested to see what it would do when in range of the shark shield, but was unable to get it any closer than where I caught my 1st glimpse. It went for another run, which was quite discouraging to my shoulder and several minutes later I had to cut the line. 
When & where
10:00am launch,4:00pm land |
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