All nighter 16-17/11

[mazman]

Over the weekend Basti and I after a few checks of the weather had picked Monday night and Tuesday morning to be good for a WP gummy chase but on Monday afternoon we came to the realisation that we had no fresh bait between us. The decision was made to hit Sorrento pier and collect some bait prior to the trip. Arriving at Sorrento the pier already had a few groups of people on the pier and it appeared as though none of them had caught anything as yet. After mucking around with a massive pike for a while, jeez those things are hard to tempt, we eventually tied on some squid jigs and it wasn’t long before I had the first squid of the trip on the pier.

We continued chasing the squid for a while sight casting to the squid under the lights and eventually we started to pick a few more up, they were being ultra-fussy and it took a few jig changes each to find something they would take. We had 9 squid on the board including one with a 30cm hood that followed one of mine up and slammed Basti’s jig as it drifted past. After this the squid stopped appearing in any numbers and the schools of tommy rough that had been cruising round had started feeding. We changed over to plastics and slow rolled them through the school to land 4 tommies between us and drop countless others. After the madness on the tommies Basti got a take on the plastic and this was a serious fish, the first run was massive and I sprinted back to the car for the night and left Basti to play the fish out. It took some pier acrobatics and leaning out over the side to keep the trevally away from the pylons but eventually it was tired enough to slip the net under it.

The fishing shutdown a little bit after this with only a few squid remaining and even they were only hitting soft plastics.

This signalled time for us to move across to westernport armed with a plethora of bait and some surf rods. We set up camp tied on the pre-made rigs and lobbed some baits out and the waiting game began, it didn’t take long for the first rod we set up to start bouncing a little before bang it was loaded up. After a very spirited fight, in which neither of us knew what was on the other end, a gummy finally appeared in the wash.

Whilst I was dealing with the gummy, it had engulfed my entire rig and ended up being kept, my other rod fell over and started being dragged towards the water only saved by the fact that I had backed my drag right off to allow for this to happen. I picked up the rod hopeful that it would be another gummy but after the first run there was no doubt in our minds it was a ray of some descript. After a few long runs it started to tire and eventually I had my first eagle ray on the beach 50m from where I hooked it and of course the other side of the rods we had out there.

After this the action backed off a lot until sunrise, upon which our baits were being ravaged by something small not long after touching down, a quick change of rigs showed that they were in fact micro pinkies we were dealing with and signalled the end of our time on the beach.

Still eager to keep fishing we returned to Sorrento to find the water crystal clear, Basti hooked a salmon rather early, which fought hard and made several jumps.

After this however our slow reflexes proved to really limit how many fish we were hooking, there were countless takes on the plastics that we didn’t manage to convert to hook ups. Basti again had a few more hits until something really wanted his plastic, hooked itself on the take and peeled line off the reel at an impressive rate of knots. At first we thought it was another trevally but it ran away from structure and the pier first which left us thinking it was either a salmon or rat king. When it was eventually close to the pier we realised it was a massive salmon but a few jumps near the pier and it had won its freedom. Devastated with the loss, tired and extremely satisfied with our trip we retreated to the car to start the trip home.

Thanks for reading,
Cheers Alex