Hi All,
Thursday looked the goods on Seabreeze and Cookie and I decided that we needed a fishing fix. Been a bit busy of late, funny how work can get in the way of your fishing, but that's life.
We couldn't get going until after 8 am but hey, at least we were going to have a day on the water and this was way preferrable to a day at work.
We headed out from Bribie to some northern marks, but when we rounded Skirmish Point we were greeted with a SW/S wind gusting up to 15 knots. You tend not to realise how strong the wind is when you're travelling with it and when we finally stopped, we both looked at each other and went, oh no.
I thought we were in for a hard day, but the wind only blew like that for the first hour, then dropped out to bugger all, thankfully.
Oh well, we both said, let's have a crack and see what pans out.
The target for the day was Snapper on SP's as usual, so they were deployed. The water temp out there was 21.3'C so the chances of a Snapper were not in my book looking too favourable. Also the tides were very flat and we had to contend with little run also, so we also deployed a Pillie each on the spare rods in the hope of a .... well, whatever.
We didn't have to wait long and about 2 minutes into the first drift my Pillie gets smashed and the heavy head banging and shaking has me thinking big bumpy Snapper. All of a sudden Cookies rod buckles over and the noise of 20 lb drag roaring over the guides tells us both that he is onto a good Cobia.
The only trouble is these two fish decide to do some fancy disco dancing down stairs and both of our lines are around each other and both are giving that zzzzzzzzzz that can only mean one thing, disaster.
I try to untangle my line around his as my fish had stopped running, but all I seemed to do was knot it up worse. Cookies fish was still powering when the inevitable happened. His line cut through mine and he was left to battle it out with the Cobia.
It performed nicely and didn't like the look of my little Fisher or the guy standing inside it with the big gaff and really made hard work of the last 20 meters, but soon enough it was close enough to pin and was soon on the deck.
It was a good fish, and was soon bled and put in the ice box.
Phew!, Let's do it again.
After a quick re-rig we went back to the top of the run and started again.
This time I hooked up but got quickly rubbed off on the reef. Mmmmmm, 2 hook ups and 2 misses, mmmmmm, not happy Jan. So yet again a re-rig and a re-start.
At the top of the mark we send out the SP's and the Pillies and after a few minutes my outfit gets slammed and Cookie quickly reels in the other rods because this is a really good fish.
Righto, with 2 out of 2 still down there, I was hoping for a change of fortune and the tug of war commenced.
It isn't hard to pick a Cobia, they run hard and fast, they are stubborn and they really test your gear and your knots.
In this country I use a Egrell Bear S10H with a Daiwa Certate 3500HD spooled with 30 lb Fins. This sort of gear has real power and you can talk turkey even to these powerhouses. We got a look at the fish after about 5 or 6 minutes and it was a beauty. Another 5 or 6 minutes later, Cookie sinks the gaff into it and hauls the beast into the boat. Phew!
It ended up in the ice box too and we decided that we didn't want to tangle with these brutes any more and 1 fish each of this size was more than plenty, so we got off that reef and headed even further north in search of the ever elusive Snapper, but the further north we got, the warmer the water got, even up to 21.8'C.
We had a couple of drops and got a couple of Sweeties but decided to pull the pin and head home and clean up.
By now the sea was as flat as a tack and the wind had dropped out completely. The ride home was exceptional.
We got back to the Bellara boat ramp and weighed the fish at the Tackle Inn. Cookies Cobia went 15 kg and mine went bang on 20 kg.
Another good day out with good company, plenty of laughs and a good fish each.
Now off to clean the suckers.
Here is a pic of mine.
Tim
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