Boat Fishing In Pittwater

Catch Report 13/10/2006

Kenny is leaving Sydney on Sunday and I've planned a boat trip to take him out. However, our usual joint at Rose Bay is no longer gonna do weekday businesses anymore. This is quite a devastating blow, since the Kingfish season is starting soon and hiring boat on weekends will be first-come-first-served basis. Anyway, Jialiang suggested another alternative and that is to go Old Mans Hat for rock fishing since it used to be me and Kenny's playground. But, since I've asked Chen along and he's always keen on boating, I tried looking up other hire services but the alternatives are really pricey. Then, I knew there's a hire service at Palm Beach and so I gave a call and book it.

Some homework was done to research the waterway that we're gonna fish and that is at Pittwater. It's a waterway that's stretched from Broken Bay which also runs off to the Hawkesbury River system. Chen did the bulk of findings and with little information in hand, we were enthusiastic to fish in uncharted territory. Jialiang came over and parked his car in StMike while Kenny stayed over my place the night before. We geared up a bit late but to make matters worse, Uncle Sam's car had a flat tyre! I quickly drove it to the nearest petrol station and pump it, only to discover that a screw had lodged into the tyre, causing it to deflate! But seems like the leak wasn't extremely bad and so we still drove it anyway. The ride was long, approximately 40km! It took about an hour to reach Palm Beach and it was everyone's first time heading to the northern beaches area!

We found the place without much difficulty and it was quite a cool place. Just seem like some holiday resort with people chilling out at the cafe and enjoying the seabreeze. Paid $65 for a 4 hours hire and the boat was prepared for us to board from the jetty. That's service! However, the tinnie was smaller than our usual Rose Bay 6 seater and apparently it was a 5 seater. There was a canopy and the boat was clean and dry, which was the plus sign. This time round, Jialiang skippered the boat and Chen did the berley duty as usual. There was quite a strong Northwesterly wind and the boatman had advised us to fish on the western side of the waterway. 1st spot we went to this place call Portuguese Bay and attempted to anchor but it was deep, plus the bad thing is having a short anchor rope! Anyway, tried bottom bashing only to have a bloody strong current! Everyone later on started using ridiculous weights such as a 4oz sinker just to be able to touch the bottom. But alas, it was just crap, with only Kenny getting a small flattie and small snappers.

We kept changing spots around Portuguese Bay with the same effect. We tried drifting but it only makes matter worst by dragging more line out because of the current and drift. Probably spent around 1 hour mucking around that area before I said let's try a nearby bay called Coaster's Retreat. It was better here as we were totally shielded from the wind. But the current seems to haunt us again and we didn't decide to anchor. Slowly, we were drifiting out from the middle and soon, everyone looks tired and demoralised. By then, I called for a change and chose the front of Great Mackeral Beach.

This choice was a top choice. Jialiang motored to the adjacent cliff face and I picked the middle of both cliffs. Anchoring was done and funny thing was it was very shallow! Probably 3-4 meters tops during the highest tide! Oh well, thought we're not gonna do well here as well. Turns out the current wasn't moving at all so I changed to smaller weights. As soon as Chen dropped his trademark berley bomb, I hooked up the first fish of a small Silver Trevally! Woohoo! Finally we got a decent one! Then, all hell breaks loose as Chen did some mod this time to his berley technique and the Trevs went berserk! They came and they came non stop, while we hook onto them non-stop! The characteristic of trevs is that when they appear in school, they usually hang around for awhile before disappearing and never comes back which is common in Sydney Harbour, but in Pittwater, they just kept coming back! Probably with a pause of couple of minutes. By then, we scored a few trevs, while Jialiang was using his trademark cubing style and striking fish like a pro. Kenny was the star of the day, he wasn't interested in small fishes and opted to go big baits. He persistence paid off with a huge ray fish (still unknown to us) and a average shovel-nose ray shark! The fight on the ray fish was exhilarating, taking line out from the Daiwa Samurai reel and Jarvis Walker rod I loaned to him. He had the photos of his catches in his camera.

By then, Jialiang tried lots of casting direction, and on one particular cast, he got a good fight from a bigger trev. Suddenly I had this thinking that the bigger ones might hang above the smaller schools and so I opted mid water. Bang, straight up I was onto a big trev. The bad part about pittwater trevs is that they are harder to hook up on size 12 than compared to their counterparts in the harbour, which is alright since I quickly changed to bigger hook in the earlier part and we were catching trevs non stop and had the best time ever. We reluctantly left after extending one more hour but it was still good fun after all, with Kenny having a good time tackling big fish on light tackle.

Total tally: 25 x Silver Trevallies (countless lost) and 1 x Chen's personal best Yellowtail

Ronald