Post by bigd on Nov 11, 2008 21:28:12 GMT 9.5
A mate, Ken, and I went to SA’s Pt Lincoln a couple of weeks ago, for 6 nights, for our family holidays. I want to stress it was a family holiday because we were certainly limited in the times and hours we could spend yak fishing. I came home slightly disappointed, I think I had higher expectations in the time I could spend on the water, and we ran into a little bad luck.
Day 1 was spent driving to Lincoln, having left Adelaide at about 4.30 a.m., and getting there about 11 hours later. We passed through Arno Bay, and man that place looks fishy as well, and heard reports of 20lb snapper being caught from the end of the jetty the previous night.
In arrival at Lincoln the scenery was brilliant. Heading south along the north shore, I saw numerous tinnies in very close fishing rocky reefs, and immediately thought there must be something there for them local to be so interested. Made a mental note.
We set up camp in the caravan park at Kirton Point, which has it’s own boat ramp and jetty, which is handy because we could wheel the kayaks straight down to the beach/ramp and launch without having to put them on the cars. Ken decided to go out for a quick pedal on his Outback,. I soon followed, and we fished for about ½ hour until dark. Ken was more interested in squid, me not so much because I’ve already got some in my freezer and the wife and kids don’t like it. I trolled a cheap Mojiko pilchard looking hard body for a total of 3x30cm salmon trout. Nothing special, was hoping for a metre long snook for the SA Snookfest competition, but it was not to be. Didn’t have the sharkshield on at the time, and must say I felt a little vulnerable at night in a place known to have big GWs!
The following day 2 of the salmon were kept for bait and I cut up and fed one of them to the local pelicans at the fish cleaning table. After holding it out to show off to the kids hand feeding a Pelican, it took by whole hand into it’s mouth and the sharp hook on the end of it’s beak sliced into my knuckle and took a serious chunk out of the tip of my middle finger! Blood everywhere, don’t think it helped the girls in being confident around pelicans any more!
Day 2 – blew a gale from the north, unfishble until nearing dusk when it tapered off somewhat. Still big whitecaps, but we though what the heck and launched. This time I had my Sharkshield and was going to use it for the first time. We wheeled the yaks down, launched, and as I was setting things up while floating in the water, I looked up and realized I had been pushed out by the wind about 200m. This was much further out than I had anticipated on venturing away from shore because it was much choppier out there. All of a sudden I ended up sideways to a wave and came very close to tipping out of the Quest – it actually leaned so much sideways that water came over the side. Somehow I managed to keep upright, and realized that my esky, and crate were not secured by the straps to the yak, and the brand new sharkshield was sitting in the crate. How they didn’t tip out and lose it all astounds me. Lesson learnt, make sure everything is fully secured before setting off! We trolled for an hour or so, didn’t catch anything, but did see a large fish or 2 on the sounder when passing over a reef jutting out from shore which drops abruptly from 2.5 to 7 metres. Made a mental note of the location, just didn’t remember that I had a GPS function on the Eagle 250 S/map to put a mark on!. Arrived back in the dark. It was quite a daunting experience for me – the roughest I have ever been in and in the dark too! No bad for an inexperienced yakfisher!
Day 3 – drove in the afternoon to Porter Bay., to be greeted by 15-20 knot offshore winds. There was a marine safety officer at the boat ramp who asked if either of our yaks was a 2 seater – sorry no! He was actually hoping for a ride out to a large abandoned fishing boat laying on it’s side which had blown from one side of the bay to the other in the ferocious winds the previous day to check it out. Spoke to a local who tipped us off that the hull of the ship had mussels all over it – told us to use them for burley and fish for whiting in the shallow white patches, which were subject to some shelter from the wind in close to shore. We tried and tried but could not burley whiting – got a few Salmon trout, tommies a squid or 2 and a troll before we headed back resulted in one 50cm Snook to Ken.
Day 4 – Went for a drive around the north shore looking for likely places to be sheltered from the wind – the wind was pushing fairly hard along the coastline with nowhere to seek protection. So we ended up launching at a place called Snapper Rock, paddling to a large jetty a few hundred metres away and having a go. By all accounts the tides/moon etc were right, we fished jetty pylons in 7-8m of water for virtually nothing – nothing came into the berley trail except an extremely aggressive squid who wanted to smash my 2 inch Berkley prawn SP, but I wasn’t set up for squid at the time. He was attacking it so hard initially that it felt like head shakes from a good fish. I moved in a shallower area of the wharf and using the same prawn caught a 60cm snook, a 35 cm salmon trout and some sort of wrasse which would have weighted at least a couple of kilos. We tried trolling, berleying up, drifting, and all we could raise were tiny tommies. Where are the monster tommies the Eyre Peninsula is known for???!!! One of the tiny tommies had his head penetrated by the treble and came in completely dead and not moving – almost like a bait!
Day 5 –all the days are starting to blend into one in my memory, but at some stage we made it to Coffin Bay with the families, where I had a flick with the same prawn SP from the beach. I was getting small bumps but couldn’t hook anything. This was just a token fishing effort. I think this was the day I promised my wife we would have a fishing free day, but I did this while the kids were playing on the beach so they were all happy. Don’t think I yak fished today.
Day 6 – in a last minute desperate effort, headed to the Proper Day area and found the only place fishable was the far northern end which was receiving offshore winds. Launched near the place where the tuna nets are towed to be repaired. Had to pull the yaks out about 3oo meters over very shallow weed, and I collected a clump of mussels along the way for bait/berley. Paddled probably 2kms to a point which showed some good broken bottom. Anchored, berleyed, nothing. Moved out a bit deeper into 3.5m after Ken who was a bit further out hooked his first KGW for the tip, just legal. I chucked almost all of the mussels out (after crushing them with my teeth!). A few minutes later I hooked a slightly undersized KGW on squid bait. From that point for about 30 minutes I caught probably 15 more fish as they bit solidly. 7 of them were keepers, 3 around the 40cm mark, and one slipped out of my hand as I tried to put it into the esky behind me! Doh!!
Then, as quickly as they started, they went off the bite on the slack of high tide. We moved around for a bit, trolled into deeper water for nothing, and I anchored up again. I cast my pilchard looking HB again, and first follow was from a smallish snook but no hook up. The second was from a squid. I lowered the HB back into the water and caught him, not a bad effort on a HB!. By now the wind had miraculously dropped right off, and I could see the bottom very clearly, and I saw whiting! This was my chance to try and catch one on a SP, so I tried again with the prawn but no luck, although I was definitely getting KGW interest. I then tried a half a 4 inch worm, and managed my 7th KGW keeper at about 35cm! We had by now run out of bait, had no mussels left for berley and it was starting to get dark, so decided to make the return journey back to shore which took about 30 minutes of paddling and then 15 minutes of pulling the yak over the shallows. Interesting story, at one stage my yak tipped over off the wheels and I realized I had left my shark shield hanging through the scupper hole. I wasn’t too happy thinking the electrodes may have been damaged, and promptly grabbed it to inspect it and ZAP! Then when I tried to turn it off, the whole electrode and pod was wet and I had to endure electric shock whilst turning the switch off!
We cleaned up and eventually got the yaks back onto the cars as complete darkness fell. The mozzies in the swampy conditions were the worst I’d ever come across, at one stage I looked down and saw about 40 mozzies over my legs. Constant brushing and movement was required to avoid being completely drained of blood.
I got back to camp to find that Cathy had been waiting for me, had to go back into town to buy her KFC as she hadn’t had tea yet, returned to the fish cleaning table to fillet the fish and didn’t get back to camp until about 10 p.m. We then completed pre-packing to make the pack up in the morning a lot quicker, had a cuppa and went to bed.
Day 7 – no fishing, traveled back through Adelaide leaving at about 9.00 am and arriving at Pt Elliott at about 7.00 p.m. to spend the weekend with friends in the caravan park.
I still had the yak on board, and the following day was nice and warm, we all went down to Horseshoe bay where I gave some of the kids a ride on the back of the yak (I bought my kids a little PFD), and some of the dads had a go taking their own children for a ride. I was really happy that after a short ride, my just 4yo girl trusted and allowed me to cut across the bay on the yak to get back to the caravan park ampsite, and conducted a pretty nifty surf landing. Very proud of her!
All in all, a great holiday family wise, slightly disappointing fishing wise, but I learnt a lot and can see some enormous potential in the Lincoln area. The wind definitely put a downer on things, and prevented us from exploring many locations, and from venturing out too far, but I reckon April/May would be an awesome time to go because the winds tend to reduce at that time of year. There are so many nearby fishing locations on offer, and we didn’t even get into the Lincoln National Park. One thing I noticed, even after the massive winds on our first Sunday there, the water was still crystal clear. So it really is a great spot, and would definitely be worthy of a dedicated kayak fishing trip one day.
I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to information on places to fish. I obviously didn’t get to many of them and had to be very flexible due to the wind.
Sorry to the SA boys for keeping them waiting so long for this report, although they’ve already guessed that it wasn’t exactly a cracker of a trip fishing wise otherwise I would have posted pictures of massive kingies, snapper, tuna, and entered an unbeatable snookfest entry! Bit of an excuse, lost the camera so no pics until I find it and it still hasn’t turned up, and typed this whole report on word initially and couldn’t find it when I went to post it, lost a bit of motivation, but it came back!
Sorry, don’t have a waterproof camera and can’t risk having it destroyed, so piccies are VERY limited. I think Ken may have a couple so hopefully he’ll chuck them onto my post a little later.
Thanks for your patience!
Big D
Day 1 was spent driving to Lincoln, having left Adelaide at about 4.30 a.m., and getting there about 11 hours later. We passed through Arno Bay, and man that place looks fishy as well, and heard reports of 20lb snapper being caught from the end of the jetty the previous night.
In arrival at Lincoln the scenery was brilliant. Heading south along the north shore, I saw numerous tinnies in very close fishing rocky reefs, and immediately thought there must be something there for them local to be so interested. Made a mental note.
We set up camp in the caravan park at Kirton Point, which has it’s own boat ramp and jetty, which is handy because we could wheel the kayaks straight down to the beach/ramp and launch without having to put them on the cars. Ken decided to go out for a quick pedal on his Outback,. I soon followed, and we fished for about ½ hour until dark. Ken was more interested in squid, me not so much because I’ve already got some in my freezer and the wife and kids don’t like it. I trolled a cheap Mojiko pilchard looking hard body for a total of 3x30cm salmon trout. Nothing special, was hoping for a metre long snook for the SA Snookfest competition, but it was not to be. Didn’t have the sharkshield on at the time, and must say I felt a little vulnerable at night in a place known to have big GWs!
The following day 2 of the salmon were kept for bait and I cut up and fed one of them to the local pelicans at the fish cleaning table. After holding it out to show off to the kids hand feeding a Pelican, it took by whole hand into it’s mouth and the sharp hook on the end of it’s beak sliced into my knuckle and took a serious chunk out of the tip of my middle finger! Blood everywhere, don’t think it helped the girls in being confident around pelicans any more!
Day 2 – blew a gale from the north, unfishble until nearing dusk when it tapered off somewhat. Still big whitecaps, but we though what the heck and launched. This time I had my Sharkshield and was going to use it for the first time. We wheeled the yaks down, launched, and as I was setting things up while floating in the water, I looked up and realized I had been pushed out by the wind about 200m. This was much further out than I had anticipated on venturing away from shore because it was much choppier out there. All of a sudden I ended up sideways to a wave and came very close to tipping out of the Quest – it actually leaned so much sideways that water came over the side. Somehow I managed to keep upright, and realized that my esky, and crate were not secured by the straps to the yak, and the brand new sharkshield was sitting in the crate. How they didn’t tip out and lose it all astounds me. Lesson learnt, make sure everything is fully secured before setting off! We trolled for an hour or so, didn’t catch anything, but did see a large fish or 2 on the sounder when passing over a reef jutting out from shore which drops abruptly from 2.5 to 7 metres. Made a mental note of the location, just didn’t remember that I had a GPS function on the Eagle 250 S/map to put a mark on!. Arrived back in the dark. It was quite a daunting experience for me – the roughest I have ever been in and in the dark too! No bad for an inexperienced yakfisher!
Day 3 – drove in the afternoon to Porter Bay., to be greeted by 15-20 knot offshore winds. There was a marine safety officer at the boat ramp who asked if either of our yaks was a 2 seater – sorry no! He was actually hoping for a ride out to a large abandoned fishing boat laying on it’s side which had blown from one side of the bay to the other in the ferocious winds the previous day to check it out. Spoke to a local who tipped us off that the hull of the ship had mussels all over it – told us to use them for burley and fish for whiting in the shallow white patches, which were subject to some shelter from the wind in close to shore. We tried and tried but could not burley whiting – got a few Salmon trout, tommies a squid or 2 and a troll before we headed back resulted in one 50cm Snook to Ken.
Day 4 – Went for a drive around the north shore looking for likely places to be sheltered from the wind – the wind was pushing fairly hard along the coastline with nowhere to seek protection. So we ended up launching at a place called Snapper Rock, paddling to a large jetty a few hundred metres away and having a go. By all accounts the tides/moon etc were right, we fished jetty pylons in 7-8m of water for virtually nothing – nothing came into the berley trail except an extremely aggressive squid who wanted to smash my 2 inch Berkley prawn SP, but I wasn’t set up for squid at the time. He was attacking it so hard initially that it felt like head shakes from a good fish. I moved in a shallower area of the wharf and using the same prawn caught a 60cm snook, a 35 cm salmon trout and some sort of wrasse which would have weighted at least a couple of kilos. We tried trolling, berleying up, drifting, and all we could raise were tiny tommies. Where are the monster tommies the Eyre Peninsula is known for???!!! One of the tiny tommies had his head penetrated by the treble and came in completely dead and not moving – almost like a bait!
Day 5 –all the days are starting to blend into one in my memory, but at some stage we made it to Coffin Bay with the families, where I had a flick with the same prawn SP from the beach. I was getting small bumps but couldn’t hook anything. This was just a token fishing effort. I think this was the day I promised my wife we would have a fishing free day, but I did this while the kids were playing on the beach so they were all happy. Don’t think I yak fished today.
Day 6 – in a last minute desperate effort, headed to the Proper Day area and found the only place fishable was the far northern end which was receiving offshore winds. Launched near the place where the tuna nets are towed to be repaired. Had to pull the yaks out about 3oo meters over very shallow weed, and I collected a clump of mussels along the way for bait/berley. Paddled probably 2kms to a point which showed some good broken bottom. Anchored, berleyed, nothing. Moved out a bit deeper into 3.5m after Ken who was a bit further out hooked his first KGW for the tip, just legal. I chucked almost all of the mussels out (after crushing them with my teeth!). A few minutes later I hooked a slightly undersized KGW on squid bait. From that point for about 30 minutes I caught probably 15 more fish as they bit solidly. 7 of them were keepers, 3 around the 40cm mark, and one slipped out of my hand as I tried to put it into the esky behind me! Doh!!
Then, as quickly as they started, they went off the bite on the slack of high tide. We moved around for a bit, trolled into deeper water for nothing, and I anchored up again. I cast my pilchard looking HB again, and first follow was from a smallish snook but no hook up. The second was from a squid. I lowered the HB back into the water and caught him, not a bad effort on a HB!. By now the wind had miraculously dropped right off, and I could see the bottom very clearly, and I saw whiting! This was my chance to try and catch one on a SP, so I tried again with the prawn but no luck, although I was definitely getting KGW interest. I then tried a half a 4 inch worm, and managed my 7th KGW keeper at about 35cm! We had by now run out of bait, had no mussels left for berley and it was starting to get dark, so decided to make the return journey back to shore which took about 30 minutes of paddling and then 15 minutes of pulling the yak over the shallows. Interesting story, at one stage my yak tipped over off the wheels and I realized I had left my shark shield hanging through the scupper hole. I wasn’t too happy thinking the electrodes may have been damaged, and promptly grabbed it to inspect it and ZAP! Then when I tried to turn it off, the whole electrode and pod was wet and I had to endure electric shock whilst turning the switch off!
We cleaned up and eventually got the yaks back onto the cars as complete darkness fell. The mozzies in the swampy conditions were the worst I’d ever come across, at one stage I looked down and saw about 40 mozzies over my legs. Constant brushing and movement was required to avoid being completely drained of blood.
I got back to camp to find that Cathy had been waiting for me, had to go back into town to buy her KFC as she hadn’t had tea yet, returned to the fish cleaning table to fillet the fish and didn’t get back to camp until about 10 p.m. We then completed pre-packing to make the pack up in the morning a lot quicker, had a cuppa and went to bed.
Day 7 – no fishing, traveled back through Adelaide leaving at about 9.00 am and arriving at Pt Elliott at about 7.00 p.m. to spend the weekend with friends in the caravan park.
I still had the yak on board, and the following day was nice and warm, we all went down to Horseshoe bay where I gave some of the kids a ride on the back of the yak (I bought my kids a little PFD), and some of the dads had a go taking their own children for a ride. I was really happy that after a short ride, my just 4yo girl trusted and allowed me to cut across the bay on the yak to get back to the caravan park ampsite, and conducted a pretty nifty surf landing. Very proud of her!
All in all, a great holiday family wise, slightly disappointing fishing wise, but I learnt a lot and can see some enormous potential in the Lincoln area. The wind definitely put a downer on things, and prevented us from exploring many locations, and from venturing out too far, but I reckon April/May would be an awesome time to go because the winds tend to reduce at that time of year. There are so many nearby fishing locations on offer, and we didn’t even get into the Lincoln National Park. One thing I noticed, even after the massive winds on our first Sunday there, the water was still crystal clear. So it really is a great spot, and would definitely be worthy of a dedicated kayak fishing trip one day.
I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to information on places to fish. I obviously didn’t get to many of them and had to be very flexible due to the wind.
Sorry to the SA boys for keeping them waiting so long for this report, although they’ve already guessed that it wasn’t exactly a cracker of a trip fishing wise otherwise I would have posted pictures of massive kingies, snapper, tuna, and entered an unbeatable snookfest entry! Bit of an excuse, lost the camera so no pics until I find it and it still hasn’t turned up, and typed this whole report on word initially and couldn’t find it when I went to post it, lost a bit of motivation, but it came back!
Sorry, don’t have a waterproof camera and can’t risk having it destroyed, so piccies are VERY limited. I think Ken may have a couple so hopefully he’ll chuck them onto my post a little later.
Thanks for your patience!
Big D