BSSS 2014 - Day 1 report

BSSS day one.
Arrived 8pm Friday, given the low key nature of the comp, no real Comp info session.  After chatting to various BSSS SWOFFERs fishing the comp, it managed to swiftly tick over the clock and we were in bed snoring by 11pm.
Up at 5:30 Saturday morning, we launch by 6:10am (awesome morning by the way!)



The five species for Saturday were: queenfish, any cod species, bream (pikey version up here), javelin or ock ock, and lastly blue salmon.

I really like the manner of scoring in this comp. All fish caught are worth 1 point per cm, but of the chosen five species for the day, you multiply the top five lengths by the number of the chosen species caught. For example catch 3 of the 5 chosen species and all the top five of those species are multiplied by 3. Really makes you think about where, when and how you will fish to catch those chosen species drawn from the proverbial hat list of 20 or so species. Best thing is it is all new the next day with a new five species chosen.

So we planned to fish the flat behind turtle island first up.  As we saw heaps of blues on this flat two week earlier - plus barra & queenies. But like last time the fish that were on the flat were very touchy and not interested in our offerings of clouser, full blown imitative prawns, and every other fly we could think of to no avail. Result of Location one - no score
We planned to then chase blues in a deep hole in a creek nearby after that but the tide had receded too far and we were cut off by a sand bar form the deep hole that always has blue in it, so what now? Location two, again no score.

With the sea flat and almost no wind about we popped the 15 minutes over to Simms reef for a hopeful queenfish before find some filling creeks on the rising tide to target rock bars for OckOck, the bream and an estuary cod - hopefully!

At Simms, we found no queenies but plenty of small Spanish macks willing to slash at the fly (but sadly, not stay tight to the reel)
We lost more flies than when previously catching macks, but we managed to fluke two for about 15 or so flies lost. Great! something on the scorecard

By now the wind was steadily increasing as forecast limited possible fishing locations
We decided then to chase some cod. But risking winds would change our plans. There is a rocky flat NW of Knife Is near the Paspaley pearl work base I had caught cod before so we ventured to it with hopes high. Once there we caught a few giant trevally off rock structure. We had one large cod chase after a 10cm GT, that got us excited for a bit - but all to no avail with the larger flies we cast to it
We drifted over the many rock bars and shallow reefs in this area. The deckie got a great visual catch of a 50cm queenfish hiding between two rock bars that came up to take his fly.

On one little rock platform bear Knife Island, I managed a first of species since coming to Darwin of a 40cm barracuda, which was quite novel to catch.
(insert image of cuda)

We thought we would head right to back of Bynoe to some rock bars to find fish but by time we got there the wind was atrocious for the location we tried. Given the wind was still increasing and it had been such a hard frustrating day, we headed back for an early swim in the accommodation' spool
The deckie managed about 150 or so points and was in 11th place, While I got a few more points to be in 10th place. The front runners were getting 600+ points.

The evening seemed quite short after the awesome group dinner as most were feeling the long day fishing in the wind. After the five species for the next day were drawn, I crashed into bed by 9pm, feeling it to be much much later! (Old man syndrome!)

Despite a below average day - expectations were still high for the next day.
More to come!