My missus managed to score a good deal for accommodation in Lakes Entrance for four nights from Sunday 22nd Jan to Thursday 26th, staying in a one bedroom apartment at the Heyfield Motel and Apartments complex. This was going to be a family/fishing/prawning break . And so I sneakily stuck the yak onto the roof of the Challenger.
We arrived at our accommodation just after 3pm after a relaxed drive from Melbourne, quickly unloading the gear and having a wander around town for ice cream and the local bait shops. After enquiring at one of the tackle stores about the fishing, I was a little bit underwhelmed. “Small trevally, pinkies and scad at the footbridge, whilst one of the so called locals did not even sight a prawn at Lake Tyers the night before” was the fishing report. Not good.
Anyway, given the weather forecast, I knew I had to make the most of the light winds on the first (Sunday) night and first morning(Monday) – so there was going to be no sleeping in unfortunately for me. I did a solo trip to the mouth of Lake Tyers for the prawns on Sunday night resulting in over 40 prawns with most being bait sized with the odd good sized one mixed in. They cooked up really well when I got back to the apartment that night. I kept a few for bait.
- Lake Tyers prawns Sunday night
- A couple of good sized ones from Lake Tyers
- Launching at Mill Point
- First fish 30cm bream on strike pro cyber vibe
- 29cm bream
The tailor were balling up the bait and forcing them to the surface - similar to the way humpback whales ball up krill and bait fish and launch into them from down below. Quite often you would see the tailor jump clear of the water or baitfish jumping out of the water to escape the tailor. But once the baitfish broke up, the tailor would swim back down to wait for the baitfish to school up again.
Over the next 45minutes, I would wait for the fish to come to the surface, paddle to the school and cast. I would get the occasional hit before they would go down again. Certainly wasn’t easy. But finally, I managed to get one to stick, but about 10seconds later – nothing. It had bitten through my leader. The heaviest leader I had with me was 16lb (accidently left my 30lb at home). So I quickly double uni knotted a 20cm length to my existing 10lb leader and attached a longer 25g laser to it. Finally on the 3rd bust up, I managed to snag one and wound in like hell to net a nice 34cm tailor. This proved to be the last of the tailor as the clouds disappeared so did the tailor. So, I started paddling back to the launch site, but not before adding a 36cm flathead to the keeper net. Perfect, I thought to myself. Enough for a feed.
- 34cm Tailor
- 36cm Flathead
- My son's first prawn
- Yummy prawns
Unfortunately that (third) night the wind continued and so I decided to give the prawns a break and give the footbridge a go. Almost a bite a cast, but unfortunately, the trevally, the pinkies and the scads were all about 20-25cm. After about an hour, I gave up.
Wednesday (third) morning would be the last for the yak as we had to check out by 10am on the Thursday. So, I decided to have a crack at the flathead using larger plastics. After about an hour I’d managed a couple of smallish flathead to about 40cm. Nothing massive, but it was good fun. Then, the tailor showed up. So I chased them for another hour catching one and dropping several others. Pretty sure I would have landed more on soft plastics, but I also know I would have been bitten off several times.
Wednesday (fourth) night was going to be the last night, so my son and I decided to give Bullock Island one last try. After a couple of hours of prawning we managed a respectable bag of about 26 good sized prawns. A great and tasty way to end the fishing/prawning component of our trip.
- Bullock Island prawns
