Yakabout - The basin, round trip

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The basin, round trip

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Sunday, 25 May 2008

Where there's small ones, there's big ones

58cm tailor, caught on Rapalla slash bait lure

I met Steve Fields on the water just after midday today and by the time I got there he'd already caught quite a few tailor, so it looked good for a successful afternoon fishing. From Basin View we trolled our way over to the west-end to try the shallows for bream, to no avail. For a while there it looked like we weren't going to find any more fish and ironically it was only 5 minutes after Steve left me out there that I started catching some steady fish - one of them quite the specimen. I caught this greenback with a trolled Rappala shallow-diving slashbait, which is a proven winner on tailor around here. On 4lb line (6lb leader) it made a very strong account of itself, jerking hard at the start of the fight and pulling hard towards the end. For a while there it thought it may even be a jewfish. Weighing in at 2kg and measuring 58cm, it was great fun to catch on light tackle.

From that point on the fish came on strong almost wherever I went, all of them (that I know of) being tailor - some of them legal, some of them not. In just a brief 4-hour session I caught at least 20 fish today, releasing most of them unharmed, keeping 3 for the table (including the big one). There were a couple of early double hook ups and before long I started fishing with just one rod. Most of the smaller ones were encountered closer to basin view itself and there seemed to be more larger ones further over to the west.

Double hook up!

The basin was alive with fish activity this afternoon, which was really very promising to see. Tailor are out in prolific numbers , all of them protected from commercial fishing. If that hadn't been banned several years ago, I'm sure it wouldn't be fishing as well as it is now. Today was the perfect day to take advantage of it, which although reasonably chilly, was for the most part sunny and calm. By the end of the day I'd covered a fair distance, forming a big triangle in the process. I used a variety of lures, including bibbed hardbodies, several soft plastics as well as poppers. Apart from the silver Finn-S minnow flick bait, every single fish fell for the Rappala slash bait. I'm really starting to appreciate this lure because I know that tailor sure do. I've seen kingies fall for them just as easily and I reckon Aussie salmon would do so as well.