What a day!!! Alarm goes off at 3:50am and I get up a little fuzzy headed as I had a few last night after a hectic week. You know how it is, ya stumble into things on the way to the dunny, kick your toe on the kitchen table leg and are just generally all thumbs for the day as a result of partaking of a few too many the night before? Yeah, you know you have had too many when you wake up and your left hand has all it's fingernails painted bright pink by your 6 year old the night before. Well it's a bloody wonder I caught anything cos I had one of them nights!!
So 2 of my goals this summer have been scoring my first Jack and getting my first whiting on a popper. Tony (Mangajack) was kind enough to invite me out on his boat again so I gladly accepted. We were on the water at 5am and flicking poppers soon after. A bit of wind at our backs helped us out with some long casts into the shallows. I had on a 65mm scum dog type of thing and Tony was using something a little smaller but similar. Wasn't long before we were getting some good follows and sure enough Tony was on the board with a nice whiting. We cast around the shallows covering a fair bit of ground for the next hour and a bit. Tony had 3 in the boat by this and I had plenty of follows and even had the lure taken down under water but no hookup. It is surprising how had they can hit the lure yet not catch the trebbles. After a while Tony let me use one of his smaller Ecogear thingamabobby's and it wasn’t long untill I scored my 1st whiting on a popper!! Tick one item off the to do list!!
Since we had that little project out of the way it was time to go jack hunting. We motored further up the creek and started to work the drop offs, deep water and snags. We got to a deeper hole and I was throwing inmy prawnstar into about 4 meters of water, no real structure to speak of just a nice deep hole and steep banks. I let my lure sink, gave it a twitch and.... wooompa!!! "Bit of weight here" I says to Tony, "Well stop dickin’ around and get it in, c’mon, fish properly we haven’t got all day"... With friends like this who needs enamas I thought. Anyway, after a brief but exhilarating fight I had my first Jack in the boat. 49cms he went! Now, I have this one and only pic.
This is where the old hangover showed its true colours. I got the hooks out, threw it on the measure and took 1 quick snap. I thought I had better look after this thing and give it a bit of a breather so held it over the side on the lip grips as I leant over to grab my phone so I could ring the world and tell them of my triumph and then............. big kick from old Red and he has pulled the lip grips outta my hand and gooorn!!! You may have heard my screams from your place? I hope the poor bugger gets out of them but I doubt it:26_002: :26_002:
Anyway, we fished the creek a bit more for no more jacks but some nice flattys for a feed for Tony.
Thanks to Tony once again for great company, great tips, lotsa laughs and the kind support while I pulled in my first Jack.
Gonna hit up the flatty's in the passage with my young fella in the morning.
Cheers!!
