Bit of a late report from my weekend at amity:
Well, we'd been planning this trip for a few weeks so I was chomping at the bit friday morning to get there. I'd organised a sickie with my good mate at work, who just happened to be in charge because the boss was off for a couple of weeksthanks steve!! and at 11:30, the barge departed cleveland with myself, my brother chris, sister steph and her partner darren, cold beers in all hands. Arrive at Dunwich around 12:15, Amity by 12:45, on the water around 1:45. We stayed on Ballow street about 100 mtr walk from the boat ramp, little place called Crustys 2 with rock wall access out the back. Not a flash looking place but we were only going to be eating and sleeping there.
By this time the tide had turned and was running out to the north, so we decided to do some drifts. It was my birthday during the week and I'd bought myself a new reel: Diawa Caldia Kix 4000, intending to put it on my new rod, which is being made by a friend, but was not ready yet. So I'd asked the folks to pitch in to buy me a rod, I ended up getting a Shimano raider snapper 7'6" 2 pce. Very nice!!
Darren was going for floating some pilchards, chris and i decided to bounce some over the bottom. So I rig up a pilly head half and cast it down current and before long i've landed a nice cod, roughly 30 odd cms, didn't measure just a quick pic then back in the water. First fish of the w/e, first drift of the w/e, first piece of bait on the new gear, first time its been used and I boat a fish, was I happy? Is the the pope catholic? They probably heard me whooping and yahooing back on land.
Saturday morning alarms for 4am, brekky and on the water by 5am and the conditions are magic, very little breeze and glass water for the last hour or so of the run out. the conditions allowed us to motor all the way up to between moreton and amity and bob around in the swell jigging chrome lures and some large plastics while waiting for the tide to turn and start us on our drifts south. Nothing interested though.I spent the next few hours throwing a variety of chrome lures for no result. I'm wondering if my approach was right. I cast up current so that when i retrieve, it is coming back to the boat with the current? Is that correct? I varied retrieves between cranking them back as soon as they hit the water, or by allowing them to sink to various depths before retrieve. Flat out and quick stop starts. The caldia gets 86 cm i think to one crank of the handle, I estimated i'd be getting maybe 4 meters of line back per second, going with current would this be quick enough? Even dropping them straight over the side and cranking back from the bottom brought nothing. Bizarrely, my brother managed to boat one little lonesome mackeral on a live yabbie he was using to try for a flathead on the western banks of the rainbow channel.
It was nailed a few seconds after beginning to bring the line in and went around the 40 cm mark, a quick pic and back in the water. That was one of the two mack for the w/e. On sunday chris was jigging a 5" gulp camo jerkshad that got nailed also and went a lot harder than the day before, after a couple of good runs, he gets it to the boat, and off it goes again but not before we see that its at least a 60cm spotty. This one gets away though, when chris gets it back to the boat the second time, the hook of the jighead comes free and rockets past his head while the fish does likewise in the opposite direction. This was mid morning about halfway through the run in.
All in all, it was a bit quiet on the fish front for us, the only other fish caught were a good half dozen little sandy flatties on plastics along the sandbanks to the south of the jetty on both saturday and sunday. But a lot of fun was had and it was great to be out on the water in such brilliant conditions on the saturday, sunday got a bit choppy with the wind blow up. Thanks again to those that offered the great info, just a pity we didn't get the fish. Just thinking how we didnt see any diving bird action anywhere nor did we see any bait schools on the sounder.
Simon
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