Short Fuse
27-05-2015, 10:53 PM
Its been a couple of months since my last trip up to Pumicestone Passage, but this morning, I decided to give it a go. Got to the area I wanted to fish just after 11am and was a bit surprised that the water was still fairly dirty. I expected it to be a lot cleaner than it was. Fishing was fairly slow at first, with just a couple of small duskies falling to the curly tails. Was getting quite a lot of short sharp hits which I put down to bream grabbing the tail but not getting the hook.
Just before low tide, I found a pocket of fish, and it was a fish per cast for around 15 minutes or so, but again, all small. I kept at it figuring there would have to be a larger female flathead in the area based on the numbers of small fish there, but if she was in the area, she did not want to play. As the tide started to flood back in, they went quiet once again, and I was only getting a fish every dozen or so casts. Then the Water Snake decided to go on strike. I could not get it to turn in any direction, and had to give the motor a bit of a bash every time I hit the go button to make it work. Looks like it will be going in for a bit of surgery. At least it has lasted far longer than any Minn Kota that I have owned so happy to get it fixed up and back on the boat.
I did catch one flathead that was wearing a weed encrusted tag, and on checking my records found it was a fish I had tagged in the same area back in mid December last year. It was 285mm when I tagged it originally, and is now 360mm. It is back there for someone else to catch sometime in the future. I pulled the pin at 2.15pm and headed for the ramp. Tally for the day was 21 flathead caught, tagged and released, with sizes ranging from 295mm through to 390mm. Quite unusual to see so many small fish in this area at this time of the year, and they were particularly finicky with most fish just lip hooked.
No photos unfortunately, it has been so long since I dragged the camera out of its case, the battery was flat.
cheers
Jeff
Just before low tide, I found a pocket of fish, and it was a fish per cast for around 15 minutes or so, but again, all small. I kept at it figuring there would have to be a larger female flathead in the area based on the numbers of small fish there, but if she was in the area, she did not want to play. As the tide started to flood back in, they went quiet once again, and I was only getting a fish every dozen or so casts. Then the Water Snake decided to go on strike. I could not get it to turn in any direction, and had to give the motor a bit of a bash every time I hit the go button to make it work. Looks like it will be going in for a bit of surgery. At least it has lasted far longer than any Minn Kota that I have owned so happy to get it fixed up and back on the boat.
I did catch one flathead that was wearing a weed encrusted tag, and on checking my records found it was a fish I had tagged in the same area back in mid December last year. It was 285mm when I tagged it originally, and is now 360mm. It is back there for someone else to catch sometime in the future. I pulled the pin at 2.15pm and headed for the ramp. Tally for the day was 21 flathead caught, tagged and released, with sizes ranging from 295mm through to 390mm. Quite unusual to see so many small fish in this area at this time of the year, and they were particularly finicky with most fish just lip hooked.
No photos unfortunately, it has been so long since I dragged the camera out of its case, the battery was flat.
cheers
Jeff