Fishing at the time of the Cyclone

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"Whose idea was it to go out at 8am on a Saturday Morning?" - Skipper
"the weather is only good for making traces and watching movies...
take care guys, rather safe than sorry" - thamen
"The water is going to be rough" - Dad

We arrived at the harbour at 730am on the dot. "You guys are the first indians to be early! Also the first to go at 8am and not 8pm". Despite all this negativity, we started making up our traces. 8 strong team, including the skipper and gillie which made that 10 in total.

Disaster struck as we learnt that the reverse cable for the boat had snapped and a repairman just left the mooring when we boarded. It eventually worked.

Bait used was cracker.

We set out - SAPS boat flies next to us : Permits and papers please. After a small delay we set out finally to the water. It was well after 9am. Us out on the sea - the boat was like a girdle and the sun was grilling us on it.

We stopped at our first point, near N Shed ( not too close as the area diagonal was illegal ). I decided to find a little plump cracker and put him on - just to test the waters. line goes down..down..down.. water was between 9-15metres now, approaching high tide.

Rod tip goes down.. on!
 
300mm grunter on the first drop, not even 5mins, another grunter! much smaller, but then rods were now going at a quick rate. Next to come was a small stumpie, a sand soldier, bananafish and then snortie. After a while and another sand soldier later, we moved towards coaling dumper and decided to use thdrift across the bay. Pulls all around! About 4 goatfish were landed, a size stumpie, and yet more grunter. All undersized fish were released.

We drifted across towards 101 and it was there when it happened. My cousins old outfit of a masterrod striker 10ft and topaz reel dipped, and he couldnt hold it. The skipper kept moving the boat following the fish, but my cuz was letting go more than he coukd reel. The rockcod sat.

Being spontaneous, rash and mostly stupid, i closed the drag and forced him off the reef. i then handed the rod back to my cuz, it sat down again! bad move. We battled for almost 15mins before my excellent knots gave up. As we drifted away, Donovan is on to another rockcod, it surprisingly took him down.. down, his rod almost bending under the boat - snapped.

My brother using mostly lures, decided to throw out a popper as there were some springer jumping near the bouy. Little did he know the sea pike were there also, Alot of enquiries, but no success, as we saw one boated next to us.

Drag screams, down she goes, and our gillie picks up a 500mm grunter.

I then chipped in with a just-made-it size grunter. A big goatfish just came in, and towards the end, we had a good run of smalleye kingfish.

As we headed back, sunburnt like brinjols, we all believed we had fun. BBM messages came in that boats were capsized etc... but it was a beautiful day, and plentiful fishing also.

Who said fishing in the midst of a cyclone would be dull ? 

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More pics..