Windy morning at Green Island

[Peter4]

Kyle and I have been a bit quiet on the bay fishing front recently, but not for want of trying. We have struggled to find any decent snapper this winter so we decided to hit Green Island this morning.

We arrived just after dawn to cold, blustery conditions with the incoming tide fighting a brisk southerly wind. Perfect conditions for shallow water snapper!

We set up our first drift throwing shallow running hardbodies in a couple of metres of water near the reef edge. Kyle immediately hooks up to a small snapper and I do the same a few minutes later. Then things went quiet for a little while.

We decided to try deeper running lures and straight away it was mayhem! Within an hour we had land 25+ snapper mostly in the mid 30s with three or four being legal. Twice we had double hook-ups and we lost as many as we caught. Kyle dropped a 40ish fish boatside on a new ecogear lure before an even bigger model dusted him and took the lure a short time later.

My best was a 47cm snapper that went very hard on ultralight gear. I managed a small bream as well. When the sun got too high and the bite turned off we headed to Ormiston reef to try some breaming. Two drifts saw me land a 32cm and 30cm (to the fork) bream and Kyle got a 29cm tarwhine.

Lures used were R2S crankbaits (shallow and deep), Cultiva Mirashads and Ecogear minnows. Rods were 1-3kg or 2-4kg with small spin reels spooled with 4lb braid and 8lb black magic fluorocarbon leader. All fish were released to catch another day. It was such a good session we plan to repeat the effort tomorrow morning!

Cheers

Pete & Kyle