Last Minute Southern Trip- Confirms no fluke

Last minute southern trip confirms no fluke

I was enjoying a lazy Sunday morning at home watching the weather via the BOM website and tossing up whether the drive would be worth the effort. I figured I could always go for a surf if the conditions were unfavourable or fish were not holding where I thought they would be.

Having miss-read the time of the tide I felt a bit behind the eight-ball and less than confident of getting onto any fish at all. Once I had arrived at southern spot x, I observed the conditions to be nearly perfect with a relatively small swell and slight northerly wind blowing. I decided I would head to the beach and rig- up whilst observing the prevailing beach conditions. The beach was very different to the last time I had fished it with a deep gutter prevailing in close before the second gutter.

Once I had rigged my 4120 10’5 fish striker running a PENN 560 Slammer as my main surf outfit running a two ounce star sinker and ganged 7/0 hooks on a paternoster rig mad up from 60lb trace, set up for whole pilchard baits. I waded out half-way through the first gutter and cast over the sand-bar in to the deeper second gutter. Once I had set this rod I quickly set my second surf rod up, this combo is heavier the rod being a Shimano dynamix beach basher 12’ft matched with a Fin-Nor offshore 6500 running 40lb mono as a main line. On this combo I opted to use the same style rig with a slightly heavier star sinker and the ganged hooks set slightly further apart allowing for larger baits to be set.

The fishing started off slow but within 20 minutes of setting the baits I had my first sign of a bump on the 4120, I raced over and picked up the rod which was still rattling away and I then set the hook. I wound in the line with no issue at all and I was doubting whether or not I had in fact hooked the culprit. However once the line was near the shore break a slight kick on the line revealed there was in fact life and this small mulloway was washed up.

After releasing and re- baiting the 4120 I was just bringing up the slack when bang and the rod crunched over I quickly struck and could feel a considerably greater weight on the line than the last fight. The tell-tale head shakes revealed it was a Mulloway and the first run was encouraging as I tried to guess what size the fish may be. However the fish did not run again and I brought it in quite quickly through the shore break revealing a healthy little Mulloway of about 50-55cms.

I then re-baited both rods and had a quite period until the 4120 again doubled over, this time it was a much larger fish running across the beach the doubling back toward the shore. There was a lot of weight to the creature but a lack of head shakes which told me it would be the first elephant of the day. The creature took off for a second run and leapt clear out of the water, which I found very surprising yet the leap revealed the true identity to be a large elephant shark of around 80cms.

The next half hour was quite without a bite so I refreshed the baits and re-cast into the gutter, this did well to spur on action because within 5 minutes the beach basher combo was finally hit, I picked it up and started fighting a smaller creature with no head shakes so I presumed it was a smaller elephant shark. The creature was no match for the heavy combo and was brought in through the wash very quickly, after a quick photo it was released and the rod re-baited.

That was it for the action, over the next 45 minutes I re-baited each rod every 15 minutes or so, I found the quite period very strange as it was what I would call prime time, the last half hour of daylight. I decided I would start packing up my gear as the sun had set so while I was busy I noticed the beach basher get a bump then go slack, so I raced down the beach to the rod holder. I wound up the slack and struck into a very weighty fish. With a few head shakes the fish took off across the beach heading westwards towards victor harbour at a rate of knots. I pursued the fish across the beach and after running 60 meters west I was able to regain some line and turn the fish. Just when I thought I was starting to win the battle disaster struck , the fish took off for its second run and with a couple of head shake it was able to shake the hooks free, very disappointing.

I quickly rebaited and got baits out to the second gutter again however the next hour was spent hoping and waiting to no avail with not a touch on either bait. All in all it was a good trip and I will revisit the area again very soon, although I can’t help but wonder about the one that got away.