G'day, today was one of those days where we knew we were going to endure strong southeasters in the bay so Scalem decided that we were going to wet a line regardless but rather than suffer at Mud we would stay closer and try Wello. "Great idea!" I agreed so it was up at 2am (actually I did my usual trick and woke an hour before the alarm at 1am) to meet Scalem at his place by 3am. We were on the water just before sun up and already making comment on the bay fans blowing on high speed. Unperturbed we soldiered on with the GPS tracking for Wello. As soon as Scalem's line was in the water before the slack in the line was retrieved he was on. Rolling my eyes already I watched and helped him net his first 42cm squire. At this point I was thinking I was not going to even have a half a chance to rig my own lines up. For a split second I thought that Wello was really going to fire up. I managed to rig up my lines but started to regret having done so because the wind was working against me. I think I broke an all time record for how many things I could get my line stuck on in one day. Problem was casting from my side of the boat the wind was blowing the line around the front of the boat and under the boat so my tally was I caught the front eyelet of the boat 3 times, the prop twice, the sea anchor I think it was at least 3 times. Not a lot came out of my mouth but there was a lot of expletives going around in my head. In amongst catching the boat etc I did manage to catch a just legal model at 35cms and later in the day an identical twin 42 cm model to Scalem's first fish. Scalem had two unstoppables. One still heading to Tahiti with a long trace and the other is still probably entanlgled somewhere on the bottom of the reef at Wello after it did a blinding run before fraying the leader and snapping the line. Considering the sloppy conditions I figure managing three keepers was still not too bad. Pulled in the sea anchor around 10am and headed for home. Still have my sea legs whilst sitting here typing. At least I have fresh fillets for dinner.
Poodroo