Crossing Middle bank

[Wolly Bugger]

A question, heading south down the western entrance from Hastings where do people recommend crossing middle bank to go towards Somers, Merricks etc.

I went in there today and there is a maze of sand bars, it perhaps wasn't the best to do it on an outgoing low tide, but I had avoided the area like the plague, but I want to be able to safely navigate it and get in the Balnarring Somers area.

[cobby]

From an ultimate safety point of view, head to bouy 8 and cross there between the main bank and a smaller one just south, it's a gap of 500m or so and very rarely breaks and rarely has sand shift. Otherwise opposite 14 usually always has a few channels and sometimes opposite 16 will have deep gouges you can zip though, it's all about your eyes and watching the water movement. But both areas shift continuously and it's fairly pointless trying to pinpoint the same lines otherwise one day you'll get stuck because of the sand shift

[CarlG]

Pretty much what Cobby said. The bloke I fish with and myself traverse it quite a bit. First time for the new season is always nervous, as stated, the sand shifts around quite a bit. Go across in the top half of the tide, when the swell isn't up, and go across in daylight to begin with. There are normally several channels running through it, just take your time, and watch your sounder carefully, if possible, have a second person with you to look ahead.

[Wolly Bugger]

Pretty much what Cobby said. The bloke I fish with and myself traverse it quite a bit. First time for the new season is always nervous, as stated, the sand shifts around quite a bit. Go across in the top half of the tide, when the swell isn't up, and go across in daylight to begin with. There are normally several channels running through it, just take your time, and watch your sounder carefully, if possible, have a second person with you to look ahead.

I think the shallowest I got was about 1 metre, before the sounder didn't give a depth. I found it interesting that the sand bars seem to run in a diagonal direction.

I need a pair of polaroids (prescription) and it would be good to have a second set of eyes. There appeared to be some possible channels between the areas that had breaking waves.

I will be exploring this area more, rather tentatively so I expect at some time that I might get stuck.

[cobby]

It's all to do with the way water coming in/out of the north arm wraps around Sandy point and meets the water from the anchorage off Silverleaves and traverses the bank into/out of the bay from Somers-Point Leo. If you watch it properly, you can see the tide and swell shift small sections of sand through the whole tide phase every tide to the point where one side of a channel will be inches higher than it was at the slack of the opposite tide phase.

Combine the swell coming off that with the influence the ever-changing bottom of the deeper western entrance has on tidal flow and the tides influence with the waves and you soon see why bouy 16-6 and especially the area around Mchaffies is 99% of the time the worst section of the bay regardless of wind conditions

[crumpet_avenger]

I used to have marks all through that area as i fished for sandcrabs there. However my marks were almost pointless because of the continual movement of the sand. If i left my nets down overnight i would often find them more than 100 mt away from where i set them or high and dry even though they were put in 12 ft of water. Its really interesting watching the sand churn through there