I got to the beach and there was a smallish break, easy enough getting out but something to be a little bit wary of coming back. The water was really dirty as well with visibility reduced to 1.3m. Possibly because of the water clarity I struggled to find the squid but eventually I was able to snag 2 and with a couple more vac sealed in the bait esky I figured that was probably enough for my purposes, and headed out looking for kings. There were no birds to give their presence away so I paddled down the coast in 7-10m of water sounding around for schools of fish. There were a couple of isolated arches but I doubted they were kings and headed on without dropping squid on top of them.
When I got to Bell Point I found a small school of fish, not very tight packed and didn't respond to a squid dropped in their vicintity. They must've been on the move because I lost them after the first pass and couldn't find them again despite 10min of circlework.
After that I trolled one of the squid north to the spot I'd found a school of kings on my last trip here. There must be something about that spot as there were some big schools of bait surrounded by one or two bigger marks which I thought looked a bit like couta. I worked the area with the squid again but had no interest. By now it was coming up to midday and the wind had started to pick up a little, not sure of this was the start of the forecast easterly blow I headed in close.
Closer in I drifted around with a bait on the bottom hoping to snag a whiting which would reveal where I could find them next time. The whole area in front of the beach looks like whiting heaven but the only ones I'd seen had been on my last trip in 10m of water when they sporadically latched onto my soft plastics. No whiting made an appearance this time so I'm still trying to crack that particular code; I did catch a small pinkie (released), some cool looking wrasse thing with spines (released) and another squid (dinner). A group in a tinny fishing near me got a nice flathead as I drifted by.
By this stage I wa getting pretty tired, I'd been doing cable rows Friday morning and those on top of the effort of paddling around all morning were starting to take their toll. I retrieved without incident, and alarmed an American who came over to check out the yak. He asked me if I ever had any trouble with big sharks out there, and pointing to a couple of snelled 10/0 hooks on 200lb leader I replied that the only trouble with them was that I couldn't catch any. He gave me a :shock: look and went on his way.
All in all a nice day on the water. Still need to work on the fitness and losing 10kg or so would be nice because the yak is a little low in the water at the moment.
Sunrise over the prom
Unidentified fish
