Angling Report – 11 April 2014

The weather made the weekend a complete disaster from a fishing perspective, but luckily there are some better conditions predicted for this week. I saw the barometric pressure drop on Tuesday and knew that rough weather was on the way and sure enough the storm and heavy rain came late that afternoon.

The weather report was good for the following day so I decided to be up early and head off to one of my favourite fishing spots just north of Westbrook beach. The surf was perfect for the light tackle that I had brought with me and I had my first bait in the water just before first light. I was using an all nylon trace and baby squid for bait when I had a pull right at first light.

I was duly bitten off and whilst I was preparing my trace again a friend arrived at the beach and I told him what had happened. It was not long before my friend was into a fish and he quickly landed the small shad – which was undersized and returned to the water.

I did not want to be bitten off again so decided to wait for a while, hoping that the shad would move away quickly. When I cast again it was only about about 15 minutes before a fish took and started peeling off line. I had to be careful because I was using young line of only 7kg and this fish felt larger than that.

The fish took quite a bit of line then stopped moving, but I could not regain any line. I kept the pressure on, all the time reminding myself about my light tackle. Eventually I managed to get the fish into the shorebreak and saw that I had hooked a skate and my friend, seeing that I was battling a bit, came over to help.

I was out of breath when I finally landed the fish, a brown skate of about 8 or 9kg.

After a short while I got my strength back and put another baby squid bait out. I was on again with what felt like a decent fish – although giving a nice fight, it was nothing like the fight with the skate. I waited for a nice wave then landed a bonefish of about 2kg.

Shortly after I had another pull which felt exactly like the bonefish that I had caught but this time the fish came off the hook after a short fight.

I heard that the upper South coast is coming to life again with small shad and salmon coming on the bite. This is excellent news because it means the shoal salmon could come on the bite in local waters pretty soon and anglers will have a variety of edible fish to try for. The summer flatfish are still about so if the weather is as good as it was on Wednesday, then some exciting fishing can be expected from the beaches.

The only problem is that the anglers are saying that the shad are generally very small at present. Release them alive to avoid being apprehended.

Because of the windy conditions of last week not much news from the deep sea anglers came through, but I am sure that the guys that were able to launch last Wednesday, must have caught fish. The water was pretty clean and felt warm as well.

The Easter weekend will be here soon and anglers should start putting their feelers out and finding out where the action is so as to be ready for the long weekend.

Sealice