Mixed bag at Bird Island...

[Peter4]

We forgot it was school holidays and we were unpleasantly surprised when we hit the boat ramp pre-dawn on Sunday. Bloody people everywhere! Luckily we hit a hole in the launch queue and managed to get away within 5 minutes. The target was snapper on the rising tide along the reef edge between Goat and Bird Islands in the bay. We pondered how many boats would be along the edge only to arrive and be the only boat there! We got to work quickly…

After 15 minutes or so Kyle managed an undersize snapper on his Luckycraft Bevy Shad. A few minutes later he dropped what felt like a much bigger fish. I scored a 36cm snapper on my BCF $5 special lure but that was it! We figured that there must have been plenty of boats hitting the reef edge on Saturday and the snapper had had enough…they were gone.

Undeterred we shifted our aim to other species. We could see the odd bit of surface action so we figured a few tailor might be in the neighbourhood. I tied on a surface pencil while Kyle opted for his favourite Storm flutterstick. I got a whack on the first cast, but no hook up. Second cast my lure is annihilated and to our surprise the culprit is a small dart. Kyle then gets monstered by a bigger fish and, after a long battle, lands another dart – this one a healthy 43cm. Then the next half hour was mayhem!

Every cast resulted in a hit or a hook up and fish were coming aboard regularly. To begin with they were all dart, then came the odd tailor, cod and bream mixed in among them.

The sun eventually cleared Straddie and as quickly as the bite started, it stopped. We poked around for a while and picked up the odd fish here and there but eventually called it a day and headed in when a pod of dolphins invaded our spot! The ramp was chockers again with people heading out but our luck was still holding and we got in straight away and were home and cleaned up by 11.00am.

Final tally was fifteen dart (to 43cm), three tailor, a bream, a cod, two snapper, a shipload of pike and a grinner. Oh, and Kyle got the three biggest dart and outfished me two to one overall!

Another great bay sesh…

Cheers

Pete & Kyle