Yakabout - Sunnyside Beach, Mornington, Port Phillip Bay, Vic, 22/03/2007

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Sunnyside Beach, Mornington, Port Phillip Bay, Vic, 22/03/2007

Tuesday, 01 May 2007

Sunnyside Beach allnighter attempt: Sometimes things just go bad

_Location:	_{Sunnyside beach}
_Date:	_22/03/2007
_Launch:	_{2:20 AM}
_{Fished till:}	_{9:00 AM}
_Tide:	_{High 2:00 PM}
_Conditions:	_{Clear skies, still water, hot (32 degree celsius) clear water}
_Wind:	_{Light northerly (0-5 knots)}
_{Species caught:}	_{Snapper, Squid}
_Method:	_{Trolling and jigging soft plastic lures, anchoring berleying and bait fishing with not so fresh flathead}
_{Quick comment:}	_{A promising night ruined by lightening!}

Steve and Kylie, hunting pinkies

Everything looked perfect for an all-night fishing trip at Sunnyside today. A bit too perfect even. Little to no wind, nice and warm but with storm front moving in precariously close. All signs were good for feeding frenzies, and indeed, that turned out to be the case. Sadly, storm clouds moved in behind me at about 8:30 PM and threatened to settle in for a few hours. I thought about it for a while, watched what it was doing and decided it would be safer to head back ASAP. So I packed up my rods, strapped them down and paddled into the storm, which was hanging directly over Mornington. So that was that trip screwed.

I launched from Mornington, as per (AKFF member) Tim's suggestions, and he was right - the car park there is pretty safe. Well lit at night and coppers cruising through regularly. Two cop cars paused to check me out as I was loading up. One of them - a female copper (another chicky-babe!) stopped to ask if I was coming in or going out and whether or not I'd caught anything. I think she asked the first question because if I was planning to head out, they would have advised me against it. There was lightening everywhere, after all, which is why I was loading up and not still on the water fishing.

A real shame it was to. Storm aside, the conditions were indeed perfect. I arrived at about 3PM and found Steve and Kylie fishing from their Hobie Outfiiter. They'd been at our fav spot for several hours and using squid as bait, had cleaned up on pinkies.

Things of beauty

I turned up trolling 3 lines, all with "experimental" Finn-S soft plastics. The silver 3" shad being the only one that scored for the whole day. I sounded some fish, threw out the anchor and berley, tied on some flathead tails and used them for bait. Although it soon became clear (judging from Steve and Kylies efforts) that squid was the go for pinkies. Therefore I eventually got around to throwing out a squid jig and after about 10 minutes I had ink all over myself. That's when I noticed the storm rolling in. Dammit!

There were little garfish everywhere, and reasonably large couta were chasing them. I figured the Finn-S shad looked enough like a gar, but I must have been wrong because despite my best efforts, only managed to get one strike from them. It was really frustrating to, because they were busting the water all over the place. So much so that I was expecting either a gar or couta to jump into the boat - and it very nearly happened twice. Two gars have sore snouts tonight Smile

I was really very confident of pulling a PB snapper for the night when I landed the squid, but thought the risks in sitting through a storm for a few hours too great. The really sad thing is that by the time I made it back and packed up the car, it started to look better. Typical!

I only kept the squid and one pinky snapper (30cm) and released five or six other fish. All in all it was a disappointing night, but it had all the signs of being great. I'll be back, very soon. Tomorrow, perhaps.