Saturday

I was still on North Stradbroke Island and delighted with my first session, the day before. It was still cold and fairly breezy on Saturday morning. The wind was blowing from the south-west but it would slacken off through dawn before turning south-east and picking up, mid-morning. Low tide had passed at about 3.00 am. It had rained overnight.

I walked down on to Deadman’s Beach just after first light and headed for Dune Rocks. It was about 5.45 am. I had decided that I would fish the pre-dawn period with a popper. It is my experience that the fish are more comfortable attacking a surface lure in the pre-dawn light. I stayed slightly to the north of where I had been fishing the day before.

There was already a keen fisherman in position reeling in a tailor on a metal slug, as I came round the corner. I joined him on the rocks and threw out the River2sea 110mm Dumbbell Popper in a pink colour. I had upgraded to 40lb fluorocarbon leader. Almost as soon as I started the retrieve, the lure was being pulled in all directions by a number of different fish, I kept up the pace of the retrieve and eventually solidly hooked one of them. It was a tailor about 35cm long. I threw it back and cast again. For the first few casts the fish whacked the popper as soon as it hit the water. Then they eased off a little. I slowed the retrieve and added a few long pauses after each big bloop of the popper. This got them fired up and they would hit the lure each time it paused. In the 30 minutes between first light and dawn I had tangled with 12 fish but landed only 4. They were all between 35 cm and 45 cm.

Post dawn by about 6.30 am the popper was no longer working. I tried a soft plastic jerkshad which was grabbed by something close to the rocks but I could not set the hook – cold have been anything – bream/ butter bream/ dart.  There were now a few fisherman on the rocks and they were still catching tailor from time to time. A curious Kangaroo also appeared to watch the fishing show.

I cleaned up my fish and walked back to the car at about 7.15 am.