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We have had some pretty windy days here on the south coast lately, so i decided to take the boat down to Narooma this morning and chase some Jewies with livebait. I picked up my mate at 4am and got to Narooma at around 5am, and set off for one of my marks. We Dropped the anchor and set out a burley trail and within 5mins we had hundreds of yakkas under the boat so getting the livies was not a problem, i sent one down on the heavy overhead combo and started to flick plastics around.
A few casts into it i came up tight on the plastic, only to drop it as soon as i applied pressure then the same thing happened 4 times on the way back to the boat then just as the SP was almost out of the water a big squid came up and had another shot at it along with one of his buddies following behind, we got the first one in then quickly dropped the SP and got the buddy in the net too. I sent out one of the heads unweighted and let it drift in the slow moving current, and set it in the rod holder and turned just in time to see my O/H combo loading up with weight so i grabbed the rod and set the hooks but dropped the fish, so i free spooled back to the bottom and hooked up straight away this time the hook grabbed, the first fish of the day was a flatty at 65cm.
A good start but not exactly what we were after, so on with another livie and sent livebait number two down hoping he would turn into a Jewfish while he was down there. 30mins had passed with no action so i thought i would check on my livies health and picked the rod up and started to wind, only to find that something wanted to stay down there and keep my yakka. The heavy O/H combo made light work of the flatties, so after a short fight we had flatty number two in the boat, which measured at 75cm and a very fat fish.
I thought it was about time to check the rod with the squid head bait, and just as i reached out to grab it, the rod bent in half and line started to scream, after a bit of a struggle to get it out of the rod holder i set in for the fight but could nothing but watch line dissapear off the reel, then all of a sudden the line went limp and it was all over. Once i retreived what line was still out, i found the leader knot had let go, which serves me right for not re-tying my leader last night before i left, i have no idea what kind of fish it was, but for now im calling it for a 22.4kg Jewfish (22.4kg, quite accurate eh? - Ed).
Our spot had gone a bit quiet, so we decided to move to another mark stored in the gps that i fished on a visit late last year, sounded the drop off to the deep hole and set our livebaits again and within 5mins the livie was hit and small amounts of line were stripped from the reel. This one didnt feel much like a flatty, putting up much more of a fight than most so it left me wondering, but it wasnt long before we got the first glimpse of it in the crystal clear water, it was indeed a flatty, and a PB too of 80cm.
That was the only fish from that spot so after moving around to a few different marks, we decided the wind was too strong now and called it a day.
