When you've been fishing as long as I have it's rare to catch a PB of any of the usual suspects, especially since the average size of many species has declined over the last twenty or so years due to increased fishing pressure. I certainly wasn't hopeful of anything special during the last week at Iluka as it was hard somedays to even get a feed.
I arrived last Thursday (19th) to find a huge swell battering the coastline and quite a few of my favourite spots unfishable. I went out onto the main wall that afternoon and managed 4 bream, 1 tarwhine and 1 tailor in a couple of hours - at least there'll be fish for tea! I was reasonably hopeful that I would be able to catch enough to give a decent bag of fillets to the rellies on Saturday. But after that first session things seemed to go downhill fast. Over the next couple of days I put in about 6 sessions totalling about 18 hours (half of them in constant rain and the other half standing up to waste deep in the surf) for three complete donuts and very few fish in total. This is NOT like Iluka I kept telling myself.
By Sunday the rain had gone but the big swells remained - I was not able to fish the front of the Iluka Bluff (my favourite all-time location) once during the entire week - and I'd started to pick up a few more fish, mostly tarwhine, bream and a few silver trevally, which were good fun on the light gear I was using at that spot.
Finally I decided to have a shot at night fishing the beach on my last serious session in the hope of something a bit better - a tactic I usually don't have to employ these days even though I used to do it quite a lot in the past. On my second throw I landed a nice solid tarwhine of about 38cm. This is a bit more like it. Within half an hour I'd added three more of similar size - great stuff!
Then the fish seemed to go off for about half and hour and I was thinking of trying another location, when I got a good solid run and hooked up nicely. The fish took off and I had to give it some line - this just might be a school jew was my immediate thought. I took it pretty steadily as I was fishing quite light and the fish was heading for a rocky area. After a few minutes I washed the fish onto the sand on a small wave .... and the line broke! I raced down and got my feet between it and the water and grabbed it with a towel.
Only then was I able to see what it was - a huge tarwhine. I knew at once that it was the biggest tarwhine I'd ever caught.
I get some good ones at Iluka every year - up to 43cm was my previous best I think. This one went 48cm!!! In the morning I took it down to the bait shop and weighed it - 2.120 kg!
In search of the 40cm bream? - not any more!
Cheers Freeeedom
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Originally Posted by finally there
