Yakabout - Bowen Island, Jervis Bay

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Bowen Island, Jervis Bay

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Saturday, 16 February 2008

Calamari, anyone?

Fortunately the shoulder seems to have finally healed well enough now so it was timely that AKFF member Wopfish asked me if I was interested in going for a fish out around Bowen Island at the heads of Jervis Bay. Of course I was.

'El Woppo' hunting the eluside Kingies

We got off to an early start meeting up at around 4:40AM and driving on to Booderee national park where we got our gear together (I was interested to note that Wopfish was also using a collection of Nitro rods) and launched at Murrays boat ramp. The plan was simple: catch some squid, then move on to Bowen island and try for Kingies or Snapper. 1 out of 3 isn't great, but better than nothing. Both of us hooked a squid on our first casts. My 2nd squid actually hooked itself on the jig while it dangled over the side of the kayak while I was dealing with the earlier one. Sometimes its just too easy. A small pod of dolphins came over to greet us during this time, though it was too dark to get any photos.

Soon after we were both content with the number of squid in the bag so we moved on in hope of bigger and better things. Sadly, it just wasn't to be. And it was through no lack of effort either, because not only did we offer squid baits, we also trolled, jigged and cast lures. Soft plastics turned out to be pretty much useless for the most part because unless reeled in at super speeds, Leatherjackets were shredding them in no time. In fact, so hungry were these little blighters that they also started attacking my leader knots. It took me a while to figure out this was happening but before that I was wondering why and how my knot tying ability just went from the best it had ever been to the absolute worst. 4 times I lost leaders in the strangest of circumstances.

Perhaps this scared the fish off? Any excuse will do...

Wopfish did lose the tail of a lure to a chopper at one point and I also managed to foul hook some kind of baby tuna, which felt like it was a lot bigger than it ended up being. What felt like something one might want to keep ended up being not a lot bigger than a perfect sized bait pilchard. I guess the drag created by being pulled in from the side contributed to that.

It was a surprisingly quiet day out there and when we were just about ready to give in we decided to go for a few more squid and I'm glad I did that because I managed to pull in one of reasonable size, whereas the others really weren't that big (though they were perfect baiters).

It was good to get back out into the bay again and I'll be doing so a lot more frequently from this point forward. Not that I'm bored of bream and flaties, but goddamn... I want to catch one of those elusive Kingies!