Aqua-Nards and Black Bream on Hards!
Hi all,
Warning: This post contains shitty content
A day on the weekend provided an opportunity for myself and mate Andy to go breamin' down the East Coast of Tassie. Some hard-core wind forecast for later on found us targetting smaller lagoons just in case. On our arrival at the first location, we made our way toward the water but I must admit, I was a little slow. I stopped a few times and held random conversations about the local flora while Andy patiently responded. You could tell he was keen to hit the water. I stopped again and had to confess that the only reson I was stopping, was to cross my legs and hold back the pains of a massive turd head-butting my undies on the inside. This was agony, comounded only by the fact that I lacked in the supply of shit-tickets. A suitable supply of soft greenery to assist in wiping was also in short supply. Andy was in tears and ironically, so was I, but mine were tears of pain. After several more stops I had two choices: (1) Make a massive mistake, or (2) Lay down sally, aqua-nard style in the cool ocean water. Relief never felt better than that aqua-nard moment!
Slipping on some clothing post-swim...
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Enough of that though, we came to fish and after such an episode I was more than ready. The recent rain and massively high tide combined to give us almost too much water and we found bream few and far between. Andy managed to get a small one on a surface fly and I missed a couple before we decided to move on.
How's the serenity...?
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A decision was made to hit up a remote estuary and boy was it a ripper move. We arrived to million dollar views and not a single soul in sight. The water was well up over the flats and with some fierce wind around, we strapped on the hardbodies. While wading out into the water, we noted plenty of recent bream digs in the sand - A tell-tale sign that feeding fish were in the vicinity. There was too much cloud to effectively polaroid so we began blind casting. On my fifth cast I came up tight on a bream that played up well over the flats. The next two casts yielded fish also. Something the Australian cricket team has struggled with: a hat-trick! The next cast found a little bit of weed, still I kept retrieving it across the surface as I'm sure there was a boil behind it... Bang! On!! You wouldn't believe it, but the next FIVE CASTS also produced fish with the best coming at around 35cm to fork!! That's 9 in 9 casts - Don't think I've ever managed that! I found another clump of weed on the 10th and the fish stayed away. I did manage one on the next one however!! While all this was going on, Andy had also landed five! With action so hot, we thought it would be rude not to drag out the fly rods. I managed one, missed a few more and busted one off before we found that our flyline was spooking more customers than we were getting.
Unhooking one...
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The tide retreated somewhat, and the action slowed. We picked up a few more on lures toward the main channel and then set off to explore some more of the system.
Letting 'one go' of a different kind...
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We stumbled across some really shallow, muddy flats but thought we'd give the surface lures a go anyway. A couple of casts in and I see a boil behind my lure... I've gone: "Boil Andy, watch this" and as soon as he turned around "BOOF" the fish was on and giving my drag a work-out. A nice fish at around 38TTF came to hand and it really set off a great day. Not one to quit while I'm ahead, we soldiered on. As if to repeat the last one, the exact same thing happened, except this time when Andy turned around the fish not only boofed my lure but actually EXPLODED on it!! It was like moses parted the water for this very occasion. This one gave me some serious curry on 3lb leader and with some weed on my line too I was nervous! I managed to land it and I'm not sure of the length - I reckon it was close to 40TTF but really FAT. If I hadn't of emptied out earlier I may have just pood myself. This one capped off a sensational day with a great mate in an amazing location. It's hella good to be alive.
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