20141019 - Lee Point Trip Report

So was given Sunday morning off (again!)
And as much as I whinge about my wife she does let me go fishing quite a lot!

So just before 6am saw us launching at Nightcliff Boat Ramp
Just launched! As still quite shallow at the end of ramp when we launched given low tide in a little over three hours at 9:35am.

The wind was only slight, from north-east but predicted to increase at midday
We headed for Lee Point for the couple of hours we had

As soon as we arrived birds were working the edges of the reef lines running east west across the front of Lee Point land based rocks.
We were hooked up multiple times in a short period of time

Tarpon, Trevally, Queenfish and Mackerel were all mixed in  together -  creating a lucky dip to what would come the boat. the tarpon were most enjoyable, Having not caught them in the harbour since I got a few landbased off east point to 63cm on surface poppers a few years ago, it was nice to get into some very fit, thick shouldered tarpon - man are they good fighters for their size!!

Large shoals of baitfish were working their way through from the harbour proper towards Shoal Bay. The east west parallel reefs that are evenly spaced in line with Lee Point land based rocks funnel the baitfish and concentrate them making them easier targets for the pelagics.

While there were bust ups all over the place, we found one spot where the they were regularly attacking the baitfish - the large number of birds above this action helped us know exactly where they were.

We had some 50cm queenies get almost eaten by some monster fish while getting them in. Once a trevally of at least a metre and another time a metre plus cod (see video for brown blur of Cod as it swiped at the queenie).

We were into fish or chasing fish for most of the the few hours we were at Lee Point.
A great morning of SWOFFING indeed

The Mackerel were bigger too (well than previous trips anyway).
Here's Peter with of the better one's, he got this one on a tube fly with a trailing stinger hook.

On getting back to  Nightcliff ramp around midday - the water was still fairly low. So much so the boat before us once on it's trailer could not get up the ramp and had to dump itself back into the water to wait on the rising tide.

Given the flat end of the ramp, even I had to put most of my ute into the water to get my boat on - at least I had four wheel drive to get it up over the edge of ramp (unlike the previous boat which was twice my size and only a two wheel drive light ute to tow it!)

we were happy to be off the water as the wind was now absolutely howling from the NW, outside the shelter of the small rock jetty at the ramp white caps were everywhere. It would have quite unpleasant out there in my low profile Stessl Protracker

It had been a really fun morning trip with heaps of fish caught, lots of double hook ups and a varitey of species coming to hand. Surface and subsurface flies used - mostly silicone surf candies by me (no epoxy like a normal surf candy, just a thin layer of clear silicone over hook shank and tail material tie in point, with prism eyes added and a few layers of nail polish to give it a crisp scale/shell like feel to crunch of fish teeth)

Bring on the next trip!  (got to do those gold bomber tying instructions blog, promise - soon!)

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10min summary video of what happened for the trip