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It is often hard to drag yourself out of bed before the dawn to go fishing in winter - but in many locations the winter action can be better than in the warmer months, and you will often have the place to yourself. And the reward of a fish you've battled the elements for is priceless.
I headed to a favorite winter spot recently to target snapper offshore. Seabreeze told me to expect about 2 metres of swell and a light breeze. It was spot on. The swell however was a bit unusual in the way it was forming curling waves close to shore, and the normally safe passage out to deeper water was a bit iffy. I managed to get out without incident, and fished for over an hour without a sniff from anything except an unlucky but welcome squid who was hooked on a plastic right on the tip of the candle. I cleaned him immediately, stowed the hood in the cooler and saved the tentacles – I haven’t used bait offshore for ages, but when times are tough it can make the difference.
A call to a friend in the know gave me hope for the coming tide change, and I’d barely stowed the phone in the dry bag when the rod I’d rigged with a squid tentacle on a jighead showed signs of life, and in came a small but legal snapper. Things were looking up when I dropped what felt like a better snapper the next cast. A local kayak fisherman John, who I’d seen launch a little after, paddled over and we exchanged theories on snapper this season – it has been a bit of strange one and the normally reliable plastics have not been producing with the same regularity as normal.
I repositioned myself about where I thought I'd picked up the last fish, threw out a plastic and set about rigging another squid tentacle on the other rod. I don’t think the plastic even hit the bottom, the reel started screaming and it felt like a monster. After 3 or 4 minutes I knew it must be getting close, but the colour I was seeing down below didn’t look quite right……Sure enough it was a fighting blue morwong. They would pull a snapper backwards in a tug of war. He went 48cm and was stowed in the cooler bag.
Over the next hour or so I managed a couple more barely legal snapper, and one good one on a 5” jerk shad which went 50cm on the nose. The journey back in through the ‘safe’ channel was seriously dodgy and I almost came unstuck a few times as the swells picked up the back of the yak and slewed it sideways almost onto the rocks. This was quite amusing to some of the young grommets standing nearby. To say it was a relief to stand on dry land is an understatement.
