After seeing Bazza and Adrian with their haul of pesky piscines, I must admit my resolution to avoid fishing for the day wavered, so we decided to head out around 4pm for our own looksee. It had been a windy and wet (but still warm) day today, but miracle of miracles, at bang on 4 pm it cleared, so Cliff and I were able to clear off for the Diamond narrows area as per plan.
we tried a few new spots, Cliff dropping a nice fish off Goldie, until we wound up at "the bommie" at the bottom end of the Diamond Narrow. A couple of casts in and my little R2C dumbbell popper got smacked, and soon a fat little 3kg bluefin trev was in the boat..... phew, the monkey was off me back! ;-)
Nopics though, as this was just standard bluefin no;4975, so we carried on.
Soon Cliffy had a baracuda on the deck as well, in the process of releasing same our driver, Harold, managed to wear the tail hook thru the skin of his thumb. No biggies really....after all, itwasn't MY skewered skin :-)... and by simply squeezing down the barb we were able to roll the hook out backwards, no worries.
Still, that put the hex on that spot, so we took off for the top of the Narrows to see what was going on there.
Short answer, sod all.
poppered all along the reefs and bommies until we neared the marker at the start of the narrowsagain, having done a huge loop around tonys Island, Noro Bommie and the diamond reef, a good hour of solid casting, for the grand total of twohalf-hearted follow ups. things were looking decidedly average, when just as I was about to call it quits, some long-toms mugged somme baitfissh off our bow.
I shot a quick cast out over the area, and half way back a large longtom skiped in and to our surprise impaled itself on me popper. OK, a bit of fun, but..... hang on! Behind us several patches of baitfish were rising to the surface, as if someone had flicked a switch.
Well boys and girls, from then on it was all go. Baitfish were getting munted all about us, Harold killed the motors so we drifted slowly down the inlet towards noro on the gentle breeze, casting left and right around the boat as baitschools were coming into range.
Fun? Oh yes. yes indeed....
... a none too shabby GT nailed the tiny dumbbell on my nice 20lb light popper set, followed by several explosions behind Cliffs lure that left him cursing the %&$^#@ short-sighted stupid fish, with fait justification I must say.
I took the time after landing my fish to get pics (well, obviously), and changed to a larger R2C dumbell, as it was getting darker and I wanted something a little more visible.
First cast, and as I started winding, cliff yelled, "Got one! At last, where's the gaff!"... as he said this, my lure too got eaten with extreme prejudice, so I never had the chance to admire his capture before I was locked into another good fish..... before long Ihad my own need for the gaff, a good Mackerel! sweet!
.... and then I was able to admire Cliffs capture.... as Harold gaffed my fish, he held it with Cliffs, and Isnapped off a quick shot....
....
...it was a hoot.
for the next 30 mins or so it was mayhem.... so many blind fish missed shots at our lures, mackerel were smashing bait from below and exploding skywards for several metres, sharks were slamming the bait schools, and one of the biggest GTs any of us have ever seen chased my popper clear out of the water without hooking up (thank heavens, no way would the little set have handled the beast).... it was awesome, we kept trying til it was well dark, and we headed home with bait being chased all around us.
Awesome afternoon.... I gotta say, I love the Solomons, Zipolo Habu is just frikken AWESOME!!! :-)
Well, I am bushed, gonna go hit the hay now, nite all!