Got out on the Hawkesbury the other week with my uncle, brother in law and four year old son. Headed to the mouth of the river to see if there was any surface action unfortunately it was dead. Moved around to the palm beach flats to see if we could get some bream but my son kept getting snagged so started heading back toward Patonga beach when we came across these guys.
A mother and calf whale. The calf was having so much fun splashing about. We cut the engine and watched for a while. I could not believe how many people drove right up to within 10 metres was just waiting for the mother to turn on them. It did not take long for the whales to move on after this. It was truly an amazing experience to be so close to a whales.
We decided it was time to catch some fish so headed to Patonga to try to get some flathead ( I had read here people were catching them there). We did a drift on both sides but could not even get a bite. We then tried Juno point for nothing was starting to get a bit worried I have never experienced it like this before it was so dead. I decided it was time to head up river so moved to the rail bridge for the change of tide. Just before the tide switched from incoming to outgoing my rod bent over. I could tell from the runs it was a jewfish although as I was using pretty light gear it was hard to gauge its size always feels bigger than it is. We managed to catch one each as the school went through.
I didn't measure them but all were released to catch again next time. The jewfish were caught on squid this was the first time I have used bait in about a year as I normally use lures so it was fun to go back to it. Even though we only caught a few fish it was such a memorable day