Slight madness

Despite the forecasters calling 20+ kt NE winds, Sunday was the only chance over the long weekend to get out at fish. Ostensibly a fly fishing mission, we'd chucked some bait rods in at the last minute - to some this is like swearing in church, but TT wanted fish for dinner and a juicy pillie is a pretty damn effective way of having fresh snapper for dinner.

TT and I were getting the boat hooked on when Michael arrived. Another swoffer, he's met TT when practice casting in a park. TT had offered to show him how it was done; had then promptly hooked a tree or fence or stray cat on the back cast and snapped Michael's rod on the front cast. Ehem.

We launched at Westhaven in a minor gale. This wasn't going to be easy. Because of the short chop the water was murky as we headed to the north side of the harbour to find cover. The naval docks were bird and fish free, so a quick cruise to try against the Devonport wharf piles saw us working flies fairly soon.

Michael casting into the old wharf

Nothing moved after several drifts so we decided to poke our nose around North Head and into the howling NE "breeze". It was simply shit out there but on we pressed. As we moved out we briefed Michael on what to expect when casting to channel markers. The poor bugger really struggled to aerialise a line and with no double haul in his arsenal couldn't punch a line into the wind. It was more than a wind so I wasn't that surprised... plus the wind was against the tide, all in all it was pretty hard.

No dice at any of the buoys, markers or poles that we visited before running back into the harbour with the wind... which was increasing.

The afternoon was spent fishing at Shoal Bay, using both fly and bait... the bait put dinner on TT's table. The only really interesting thing was the medium sized kingi that chased up a hooked snapper.

It takes a slight kind of madness to try and fly fish in those conditions, but good to blow away some cobwebs none the less.

On my way home across the NW Motorway viaduct, I saw 3 swoffers fishing the Pt Chev shell banks. I'm seeing more and more fly rodders out there these days.