Wednesday

After my success with the Tuna on Tuesday I was keen to get back out fishing on Wednesday. But at 5.00 am it was raining hard and I could not face a dawn fishing session. I waited for it to stop, but it didn’t, so after a few cups of tea, I went into Iluka, to the café, for breakfast. It’s called ‘Sumthin Tastee’ and whatever you order, it tastes good and there is plenty of it – which means it fits my main criteria for a good restaurant.

While I was eating, the sun came out and I decided to drive down to the Iluka rockwall for a quick fish. I ran into a couple of fishermen heading out along the wall. They reported that, the day before, they had dropped a good long tail tuna. They had been fishing with live garfish. The fish shook itself free right at the base of the rocks and was a good size. They had seen a few more, good sized fish landed. They had also heard reports of a few good spanish mackerel being caught off the same spot.

It was noon and I was after something a little easier to land. I rigged up the Shimano Catana with a 1/8th 1/0 jighead and 10lb fluorocarbon leader and a 2 inch GULP Jigging Grub. I tried on the ocean side of the wall for about 20 mins – in the gutters, close to the shore and I found a couple of small dart. I swapped to the inside of the wall. The tide had turned and was running in. The water was fairly clear but there was an obvious line where the clearer, ocean water met the dirtier river water. I swapped to a GULP 3” Minnow in the Banana Prawn and cast it at the edge of the line and let it sink. A small bream grabbed it on the drop. I released the fish and the same thing happened on the next three casts. I cast closer to the base of the wall and after a few bites connected with a slightly bigger fish. I released it and carried on catching a fish every two or three casts, but none of them were much bigger than 25cm.

Plenty of small bream on the river side

Most were around 25cm or less

There plenty of dart in the surf

The rain started again at about 2.00 pm so I gave up. The fish were everywhere and I am sure early morning or dusk would produce some excellent catches here.