With the forecast of light winds on Friday I couldn’t resist but have the day off work and go fishing but with the way things ended up maybe we should have stayed home. Headed up Thursday night and arrived about 10.30pm with no wind and the plan would be to head wide 3.00am in the morning. I awoke at 1.30am with the boat shaking with extremely strong winds and bucketing down rain, which made for a wet bed. This carried on till well after sun up and we beach launched the boat and headed for some close grounds east of DI. We pulled some nice Large Mouth Nannygai, parrot, moses perch, pearlies and cobia before deciding to head wide. After pounding our way out to the 20km area we decided heading wide wasn’t an option as there were some heavy clouds around and with them was strong winds. While traveling at an easy 20knots we had the scare of our life with a Dolphin coming out of the water at full speed towards us and just missing the right side of the bow barely missing the left corner of the windscreen and landing about 5mtrs behind the boat. It actually looked like he was trying to miss us with a barrel roll and kinked body that 1 foot to the right would have seen him through the windscreen. They are big when there that close to you and flash past right in front of your head. We found many new spots in the area but fishing was slow and sharks were giving us a hard time with one being pulled up around 8ft in length. I soon pulled a good fish which felt like a Cod so I pulled him up at a slow pace hoping that his stomach and eyes would stay where they should be but once surfacing his eyes had bulged badly and after deflating his swim bladder we tried letting him go but with his eyes the way they were he didn’t have a chance so he was pulled aboard. We fished the normal spots for squire, moses perch, and pearlies before deciding to fish in close before dark. The fishing soon fired up in close not long after arriving with Large Mouth Nannygai, Parrot, sweetlip, moses perch, hussar all coming aboard. I hooked a solid fish and up came a good Snapper soon followed by a nice legal Red. The fishing went quiet just after dark and we headed in hoping that the waves weren’t dumping on the beach for the retrieve. We retrieved the boat with ease but the problem would be a very steep bank that ran all the way along the beach. After many attempts of trying to get up over the steep bank with different angles and speeds we managed to get over it. Saturday morning we awoke to find that SE change had not yet come through strong so we headed to the bait grounds for some livies and on arrival the wind soon started blowing. We headed for the close in grounds and anchored up and pulled some big squire, parrot, sweetlip and large mouth. With the conditions becoming pretty bad we decided to pull the pin. After a quick clean up and ready to pull the anchor the unbelievable happened. Battery voltage low and not enough to turn the motor over quick enough to fire but its cool we will try the second battery and would you believe it to didn’t have enough to fire it .BUGGER.(Battery’s had been charged before trip) So for the first time ever in my and my fathers life we had to call the Tin Can Bay Coast Guard and gave them the co-ordinates to come and assist. The conditions soon turned worse and a good 20knots blew and the seas become over 2mtrs with the ocean looking like a washing machine. Coast Guard was a good 2 hours away and they soon radioed through that the bar was bad with a good 3mtrs of sea and that a few had gone over the top of the big cat. While waiting for them we had two big rollers come over the side and we were becoming a little concerned sitting out there in a 5.5mtr boat. They finally arrived and the wind and sea had dropped off a little and they soon towed us back into the bay area of DI where we jump started the boat and we would be on our back to the beach for the retrieve but on return we found the waves were huge and dumping onto the beach with force and then sweeping up the beach for along way. With many people on the bayside a couple of guys gave us a hand and the retrieve was a bit of fluke with a big wave picking the boat up and dumping it almost perfectly on the trailer. A dive boat came in after us and that created some great pics of what can go wrong within seconds with the boat getting thrown around and the car getting half under water. Those beach dumps can be enough to put anyone off from heading to DI. Anyway because we had the flat batterys we had missed low tide so the hard slog down the beach for 1.5 hours in the soft sand wasn’t much fun. Atleast the year continues with some good fish but that trip was one we would rather forget. A massive thanks to Coast Guard Tin Can Bay.
Cheers Greg
