Harbour madness - return of the Mac 17/2/15

[Ojay Samson]

After putting flick stick 1's reel into retirement after a recent fishing trip to brooklyn ( shimano sienna 2500fd & shimano catana originally a 7' rod but breaking the tip and repaired to a 6'5" rod) with the oscillation gear being worn down into a square looking gear this cranking the handle no longer being smooth and 8 years of service I got a replacement combo from a camping fishing and boating store a shimano symetre 3000FL loaded with berkley fireline tournament exceed flame green in 5kg and a shimano sahara 6'6" rod in 3-5kg.

Now to the report, hit the harbour from hunters Hill ramp, and to my disappointment, newly implemented parking ticket machines there with a very active ranger booking people with no tickets. Paid the $9 and was on my way. Ps launching there sucks during low tide, as I managed to find out first hand as to many selfish @rse#holes have chewed up the ramps foundations from power loading their boats. I digress, off we went only armed with the 2 new flick sticks, it wasn't long till we found the schools of seagulls and bust ups.

The rods that did the damage were :

- Pflueger trion 2-4kg bream specialist matched with the aforementioned symetre 3000FL and 8lb fluoro leader attached by fg knot.

- Shimano sahara 2-5kg 6'6" with the 2500 symetre and 8lb fluoro leader attached by improved albright knot.

The soft plastics used were berkley powerbait in clear minnow using bream jig heads more accustomed to 2" grubs 1/16 & 1/32 jig heads and alike. A few of the jig heads had to be rebent inwards after a few blistering runs from the frigate mackerels.

The day went with us chasing the schools around fort Denison and taronga zoo, with myself casting out hooking and passing the rod over to the gf to reel in all the while casting the other rod and hooking up to. Was definitely the most fun day yet.

Near the end we switched up to using 10g halco twisty and river to see whitebait 10g metals. It was the best.... With the schools of fish ending up surrounding us many times chasing the whitebait hanging around my boat for protection.

Was a great afternoon, my only regret was not buying a bag of ice for the day for the keepers.

Was a great day out with even horse yakkas on the chew with one instance of the gf fixing slack line from a reel and to her surprise a 30cm yakka took the sp that was only in the water due to maintenance and not being worked or anything.

Ended up boating 16 frigate mackerels and 2 fat yakkas, and lost about just as many due to either luck on the fishes part in bending the thin gauge bream hooks just enough, or the transition from passing the rod over to the Mrs.

Was definitely the best day for christening the new flick stick combos, the sound of drag peeling is euphoric.

Here are a couple of pics of the first few fish boarded. Ps never anchored, just chase and drift the entire time.

Also have some video footage but am yet to process it as I don't have video editing software to cut out the boring bits and such, I'll get to it eventually I hope.

Never caught frigates before till then, loved it on the light gear. Didn't manage to catch any rats or Aussie salmon or bonito. Not sure if they were in the pack or not though, is there a different tactic to catching those other than what I was doing of cast and fast retrieve?

Parents were happy, fish were cooked or smoked.. Just in time for ash Wednesday lol.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

[Marcel]

Definitely great fun on light gear even better I reckon when standing on a jetty with shallow water and seeing the schools of the little green bullets come flying in and flicking plastics and slugs in front of them and watching them smash your lure and take off and listening to your real scream and your line cut through the water very addictive well done anyway mate

[JohnDory]

Gotta love those silver torpedos on light gear

Nice report

Dave

[mrsswordfisherman]

Ojay submit that for a second place in our records

[Ojay Samson]

Ojay submit that for a second place in our records

Haha, I'd love to but the biggest one that day was actually caught by Mrs Ojay... And she has a 8 minute video to prove it haha. The one I'm holding in the pics actually a fair bit smaller then hers lol. I regret not taking a pic on measuring tape as the pics of hers doesn't do it justice, cheers.