Summer Holidays

[Ducksta]

After my fairly poor showing (fish wise) in the bay over new years, we got back to Sydney and drove up to the Central Coast for a bit of a holiday with my family.
Nice secluded little area - little or no coverage on mobiles for the week...
Got to hang out with a few nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters.
Plenty of frosty ones, BBQ's, beach cricket, duck feedings, and a bit of fishing thrown in.
I don't have many photo's unfortunately. I think some of the mums took more...
We stayed in a sleepy little spot in Wagstaffe - which is just around the bay from where we spent every family holiday for some 27 years (Hardy's Bay).
Fishing mostly landbased, we picked up a few good feeds of the estuary mainstays - bream, whiting and flathead.
Luring action was a bit slow this year including the most frustrating whiting popper session of my life. Watching schools of 35cm fish and solitary 45 cm+ fish (other blokes were calling them 2 foot, but I'll be realistic...) cruise the flats but not a single follow. Other blokes fishing live nippers on the same flat further down were dragging in undersize bream hand over fist but not a sniff from the whiting either. I did pick up a couple of ting the previous morning and a good bream and plenty of tailor as well on the poppers.
Spent a bit more time than I have for many years fishing baits and helping put my nephews on to some fish. My nieces got a couple too, but no help needed from me.
Put a good few mornings in around 'Half Tide' for a few nasty visitors - eels and little sharks. Plenty of bust offs on the oyster encrusted rocks too.
Picked up a stack of cod around there as well - good size, smallest would have been 400mm. Shame they are protected, they look delicious! Interested to hear what Mick Baker has to say - we've never seen cod in those parts before. And the locals we spoke to have only started seeing them recently, and not in the numbers we seemed to find them.
A few pics anyway...

[themissus]

No better way to spend a week!!
Cheers Kim.

[Bazil Brush]

Look's like you made up for your windy trip up to H/B Duck, nice feed..
Baz

[Mick Baker]

Hi there Ducksta,Glad to hear that you got onto a few fish.If I knew were coming up this way I would have brought the boat down and had a session.That problem with the whiting showing no interest has been common lately.I have been experiencing the same thing up at Lake Macquarie.Even unweighted live bloodworms on 5lb flouro line drifted past their noses gets no reaction.They seem to be feeding but I don't know what on.
What type of cod were you catching.Weren't Wirrahs were they.I caught a few needle tooth cod from the coastal rocks many years ago,but none lately.They are a proctected species as far as I know.I havent heard of other cod species from Brisbane waters,but I haven't fished as far down as Half Tide Rocks.
Cheers, Mick

[Ducksta]

Mick - I was going to shoot through a message but no phone reception! It was so peaceful
No real idea on the species. My gut feeling and my brothers as well was estuary cod. My brother in law said he was pretty sure they used to eat them as kids and they just referred to them as rock cod. Both are common names for fish that are protected in NSW so we returned them. They dont really match pictures we could google exactly but have similarities to both. Wirrah sort of looks like them again, but not exactly from memory. And also our fish were mostly 55cm+, and Wirrah seem to say they may out closer to 45cm. Either way, if it was protected, or nicknamed 'old boot', glad we didnt fillet any
I'll check if anyone has any photos.

[Mick Baker]

Recipe for wirrah or "old boot". Place fish in large pot with handful of blue metal and bring to boil.When blue metal is soft,eat blue metal and throw away wirrah.Wirrah are not protected,but not worth keeping.As you said,do not grow large (maybe a couple of kg ).They are a pest when fishing for drummer or groper,Capable of swallowing large baits and hooks.