So we left off yesterday with the plan to have an afternoon fish and then a night fish and to see what happens. We found a little opening in the gutters just north of Dundaburra and since we hadn’t been seeing any openings we decided to throw our baits straight into the middle. WOW, what a spot! I had that fishy feeling again and after putting the baits out we barely had time to walk back to the car before the first rod went down. “Not long now” I said to young Nicholas and sure enough bang went a shark. The fight was on and it was taking reasonable drag. I won’t bore you with the details but we fought him for a while and then got rubbed off on the sandbank! That’s the biggest problem with these narrow, shallow gutters (well that and not having much help to find the fish)
This place was on fire as we had 3 dead baits and 1 live tailor all in the same spot, all with the same end result. This all took place within about an hour before we decided to hit the same spot at night, throwing slabs to see what happened. None of us have ever fished for Jew fish but we were willing to give it a go. As you may well have guessed we didn’t have too much luck. Arthur caught a little flathead but nothing bigger, that’s definitely the thing about fishing – you can know how to find one type of fish but that doesn’t mean you can find them all! Each species has its nuances and it takes a long time to learn them all!
We headed out the after a bit of a sleep-in only to find the conditions had taken a turn for the worse, bigger swell, wind, weed and lots of current. We gave it a crack for about 30mins for no luck and decided to head over to Waddy to try and get out of the wind and to show first timer Nick a bit more of the Island. We got over to waddy and whilst the swell was down a lot the wind was just as annoying and the weed was even worse. We gave it a good crack… for about 20mins before just relaxing on the beach. It just wasn’t worth it. We called it quits and headed back east, eager to give it one last crack for Arthur’s last day.
The tide wasn’t the best for getting tailor but we had two deadies to slide out, using a new technique just learnt from the South African boys, cutting off the fins and the tail to make the fish more aerodynamic and slide out much easier. Arthur had all but given up after a nice big birds nest but I knew our hot spot wasn’t going to let us down. Once again we didn’t have to wait long before getting our first strike. We weren’t too far from the rod and we are getting more used to it so we didn’t panic to start with and just casually made our way to start the fight. This thing wasn’t as big as some of the others but he still had some good weight to him, we tightened up the drag and Artie put some good pressure on him and it wasn’t too long before he was well under control. With a big rod on the beach and a nice bend to be seen we started to gather up a fairly big following.
We could see the shark coming in closer and we got ready to leader the grey suit. Fins in the water and hand on the leader devastation struck! We must have caught him on a bad angle and the leader busted off with the shark only metres away. If I had of had the gaff in my hand I would have given it a crack but unfortunately Nick was just too far away. We got a fantastic picture that really catches the emotional pain of again being so close and yet just missing out again.
Arthur was devastated, sure it was just not meant to be his trip but I knew our special spot had at least one more battle in it for Arthur to fight. I reset my line and threw out another sinker whilst Arthur prepared the last bait for the day. Feeling bad for him I volunteered to get the bait into the water, I got an absolutely cracking throw off, before getting absolutely smashed by a nice big wave. Totally worth it though as the bait was well on its way to the perfect spot. How do I know it was the perfect spot? Well I think the wait was no more than 10 minutes before something had a good go at the bait. The rod dipped for a good few seconds before coming back around. We knew what that meant so we tightened the gimbal belts, got out the cameras and got ready for battle stations.
Sure enough, after about a minute our old friend came back around for seconds and this time he really took off. This one as definitely bigger than the first. Probably not the biggest of the trip, but big enough to start seeing a bit of green line under the first 300m of yellow braid. Artie was struggling a bit with this one, not only had he just pulled a shark all the way to the shore but this one was giving him a bit more stick. It didn’t matter though, Artie loves his fishing and he’s a pretty fit young fellow and so he stuck it out, slowly gaining line until finally getting mono line back onto the reel, we knew he was getting pretty close to bringing him back over the sandbank and Nick designated spotter. We thought this one was a bit bigger and Nick soon confirmed our thoughts, estimating a big shadow coming through the shallow water at somewhere around the 2m mark. Everybody was getting pretty excited when that familiar thing happened, the line snapped and devastation sank in. This time it was the 40 pound mono that gave up. We think it must have rubbed a bit on the way out, and a bit on the way back in before finally deciding to pack it in under the strain.
Whilst we were pretty disappointed by the whole situation and Arthur was absolutely gutted we are at least learning. Next time we will put less pressure on the leader and take our time getting the Shark to shore. We think next time we get the shark under control, after putting some hard drag on him to tire it out we might back the drag off a little bit just to lessen the strain the line is under, the last thing I might do is go up from 40lb to 50lb mono. It seems at the moment the mono is doing the majority of the work for us, stretching with the shark’s power and rubbing on the sand banks so having just that little bit more abrasion resistance might do the trick. Arthur is heading home tomorrow and we are going to spend a day sightseeing around the southern lakes before getting back into the fishing on Monday hopefully!