Yakabout - Sunnyside Beach, Mornington, Port Phillip Bay, Vic, 25/03/2007

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Sunnyside Beach, Mornington, Port Phillip Bay, Vic, 25/03/2007

Tuesday, 01 May 2007

Sunnyside beach - Another dissapointing afternoon that could have been so much more

_Location:	_{Sunnyside beach}
_Date:	_25/03/2007
_Launch:	_{3:30 PM}
_{Fished till:}	_{7:40 PM}
_Tide:	_{High 8:00 PM}
_Conditions:	_{Clear skies, waves to 1 meter, (19 degree celsius)}
_Wind:	_{Moderate south easterly (10- 20 knots)}
_{Species caught:}	_{Snapper, Flathead}
_Method:	_{Trolling and jigging soft plastic lures, anchoring, berleying and bait fishing with fresh squid}
_{Quick comment:}	_{One of those (forgettable) days}

While I sit here at my PC at 3:25AM waiting to head out again at 5:30 AM, I thought I'd fill some time by reporting on a relatively eventless trip at Sunnyside Beach on Sunday the 26th. I met up with Steve at 3PM that afternoon who had his part-time tandem buddy, Jeremy along for the ride.

Originally I'd planned to not head out this day, despite making earlier arrangements. I should have stuck to my guns to and I knew it when we got there. It wasn't that the wind was blowing a lot harder than expected, but more so that it was coming from the east, which is something I never take as a good sign fishing the east side of PPB.

Regardless, we were there now and had nothing better to do, so in we went. Steve and Jeremy headed straight out to try their luck with pillies and squid while I drifted my way over to the reefs while jigging SPs along the way. I picked up a nice little flathead (32cm) for my efforts.

By the time I reached the guys I was really starting to think it would be a quiet day. When I spotted the seal playing around nearby, my heart sank even further. Pickings would be slim this day.

Steve and Jeremy managed to coax some fish by berleying cubed pillies and eventually had a degree of success, managing a few pinky, a banjo and a plump flathead that I' m guessing would have gone 40cm. I only managed one small pinky to go with my flatty, although I did have a couple of promising close calls.

One occurred when I went to investigate an agitated school of baitfish. After tying on what I figured would be the appropriate SP to lure a sambo, snook or couta, I proceeded to see what I could find. I had a very nice looking fish follow up on the first cast - if I had to bet I'd say it was a snook.

Much closer, however, was a sizable snapper that I lose about a meter under the boat. I hooked this guy on a squid tentacle, and it fought very hard. Unfortunately I combined over-excitement with what must have been a terrible badly tied on hook, because just as I spotted him (and yelled "yep, it's a damned good fish") the knot came undone and the fish was free. Dammit! This fish was easily my Sunnyside PB for snapper.

I didn't take any photos worthy of consuming your bandwidth with, although I did try out my cameras video record feature with the camera in it's waterproof housing. I filmed the seal, which took off soon after it saw me (this is the way to shoot seals, for any of you commercial fishermen watching). Nothing exciting really, but I could and probably should have made it exciting by diving into the water and trying to get underwater footage of it. Next time maybe Smile

Watch the video here if you're so inclined. I'll have another report up later today to let y'all know how this morning went.