Yakabout - Jervis Bay: Bowen Island & Hole in the Wall

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Jervis Bay: Bowen Island & Hole in the Wall

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Sunday, 05 October 2008

Snapper, estuary cod and pike

What was supposed to be a 6AM start this morning turned out to be a 7AM start, thanks to the daylight saving switch over that I failed to prepare for. Usually such an error wouldn't be too much of a problem but today I had arranged to pick up a work mate and take him out kayak fishing. We were still able to get out on the water fairly quickly though, launching from Murrays beach and paddling over to the south end of Bowen Island, which is a very fishy area. With oceanic waters rushing in through a bottle-neck entrance, it's usually also a fairly rough area to, so I was a little hesitant to take Jamie into it at first. Despite being fairly new to kayak fishing (and his first outing on an Adventure) he told me that he'd paddled surf skis in the surf without problem, so using that as a benchmark we paddled forth into the chop.

Turbulent water on the sth side of Bowen Island

There is also a marine park sanctuary zone in this area so we had to be careful about drifting into it, so in lieu of any marker buoys we drew imaginary lines where we thought the boundary lies and proceeded to fish on the safe side of it. I hooked up to a worthy fish on my second cast, falling for a 6" white flickbait style soft plastic. The snapper gave a good fight as I brought in to the side of the yak, although it spat the hook right at the last moment as I tried to comfort lift it aboard. I wasn't terribly pleased about losing the fish (which would have been about 50cm) but I felt confident that I'd get another shot at it.

56cm snapper. This guy fought a bit like a rat kingy

Sure enough I'd hooked up again moments later, this time to an even bigger fish. For a few minutes into this fight I was positive I'd hooked a kingy, as it peeled off a fair amount of line in a bid for the relative safety of the reefy bottom. It was winning the fight at first, towing me rather close to the rocky edges of the island. Eventually this became too close for comfort so I tightened the drag a little and peddled back out of harms way, persuading the fish to come along with me. A few minutes later I had this fish boat side as well, this time executing the comfort lift with more caution. The 56cm snapper came aboard without fuss and was instantly bled, gutted and even beheaded so I could fit it into the ice box. There's dinner for tonight and tomorrow night.

Jamie with a nice estuary cod

A little while after Jamie pulled a few small pike and then this nice estuary cod, we decided to get out of the rough stuff and troll over to the north side of the island in search of the elusive king, which we were unable to locate. From there we made our way to the middle ground reef and then back towards murrays beach, and then to a spot known as 'the hole in the wall' where we tried our luck for salmon and tailor. On the way back to the area I quickly diverted course back to the spot where I'd pulled out the snapper earlier and had a few ore quick casts - one of which resulted in this ideally pan-sized snapper. There's dinner for the neighbours (whom I'm starting to become rather popular with).

Although we were unable to catch any other fish, we certainly did see signs of them a few more times, with several schools of baitfish being rounded up by unseen predators. We persisted by following these baitballs for a while, casting in a variety of lures in hope of hooking up, all to no avail. By 1PM we were both pretty much done and decided to head back in. The action hadn't been terribly hot, but it was good enough to provide inspiration though and clearly Jamie had a great time fishing from the Adventure.

Tomorrow I'm heading out again, this time on a sailing/fishing trip, so I'll be packing the island sail and amas. The plan is to cover a fair few km, so instead of flicking soft plastics around I'll be trolling a metal slug of some description. There's a fair chance of hooking up onto salmon or tailor and given the area we'll be sailing in, am always a chance for a kingy or even a tuna as well. Keep an eye out for a follow up report tomorrow night.