Yakabout - Bowen Island, Jervis Bay

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Bowen Island, Jervis Bay

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Sunday, 06 July 2008

Bait fishing in winter is for brass monkeys

That sucks

Considering that I approached today's fishing trip with a 'big' mindset, the result of my efforts today is an epic fail. Although I did catch quite a respectable sum of fish (I lost count) not a single one of them was worth keeping. The bulk of the catch were slimeys, one of which I used as a live bait (the rest released). On top of those guys were 4 or 5 pike. Despite the numbers of fish caught, I was so uninspired that I neglected to take photos of any of them. I didn't even get a worthy bite!

Truth be told, that probably had more to do with the weather than anything. No, scratch that - for a winters day, you couldn't ask for much better. But I did feel the cold, especially given the fact that I was bait fishing from an anchored stationary position, instead of my usual regime of trolling from spot to spot. It just doesn't pay to sit still in a kayak on a winters day - even if it's a good one. It felt OK when I started fishing at about 2:30PM, but by 4:00 I could no longer feel my toes. About half an hour later placing bait on the hook became really challenging because my hands were now also numb. Despite being covered with Sharkskin waterwear from neck to toe (with an icebreaker beanie on top) my freezing extremes soon sent shivers throughout my body. By the time the sun was threatening to withdraw I was completely done and thus, my trip cut short.

Today's epic fail came through no lack of trying. Not only did I come equipped with a large pre-frozen berley bomb, I also had a time-proven bait (bonito) with which to dangle. The berley trail worked a treat to. Within minutes of throwing it in, the sounder came alive with small fish arches. The bites came immediately, resulting in the first landed fish (slimey) within a minute. It was big for a smiley to and with only one exception, was the largest fish caught for the day. The exception being a pike that was bigger than I thought pike could actually get. I was tempted to get a photo of this fish, but the damned thing stank so much I just wanted to get it back to the water ASAP.

Too cold, too hungry, time to go home

Today's trip wasn't all frustration though. The hard lifting work was taken out of the equation by a couple of clever modifications that I've been meaning to do for a while now. One of these is a pulley-driven kayak storage system that lowers and lifts the kayak off the car roof racks (inspired by similar systems created by Astro & Billybob). The other is a simple system that makes easy work of getting the kayak onto the car from the launch spot. With my shoulder refusing to get any better, I figured it was about time to take some advice that has long been given to me. I'll take some photos and write up a description of both sometime during the week.