The Entrance - January 2004

The Entrance at Night

Date: January 2004

This trip is becoming a favourite of mine. With balmy evenings this time of year it's hard not to enjoy an evening on the water, especially when there's some good fishing involved. Having met at the boat ramp at around 4pm and allocated non-boaters to their boats we all motored to various locations around The Entrance bridge and channel. Some members elected to wade the sand flats, casting over the drop-offs while the rest of us manouvered around the pylons and channel markers to fish the deeper holes. Daniel and I started in my favourite spot just next to the boat hire moorings and cast around the jetty and boats hoping to start the evening off with a bream or two. Using an intermediate line and a small crazy charlie I spent the next hour or so flicking my fly between, around and over the boats and ropes before deciding it may be time to try a new location. Having watched Dave and Bob head down the channel to anchor off one of the markers I decided to follow and see if they were having any luck. We found them berlying up with bread and casting to a school of mullet. We joined the caravan of boats, tied head to tail by ropes creating a wall of waving rods in the setting sun. By the time the berly had run out we were still without a fish so we headed back to the bridge to try again as the sun had set and the tide was starting to run out. We anchored under the bridge near the holes showing on the sounder and cast clousers into these hoping to tempt a lizard. As the night wore on we managed a slow trickle of flatties while we watched others in the club call it a night and head off back to the ramp. We perservered and by 10pm had moved out further into the channel near Brownie who was having variable success in the drop-offs nearby. We were about to finish up for the night when I decided to try a final few casts over towards the bridge and so began a string of hookups. In the next sixteen consecutive casts I let the fly drop to the bottom upon which a flathead would grab it and played to the surface before landing twelve of them up to about 40cm. Daniel, who was casting in the opposite direction, managed one bite. It was an amazing session, possibly my best. After sixteen fish I decided to let Daniel have a go (I'm a generous guy) only to find he had broken the tip on his rod and was now sitting back enjoying a cigarette. He was happy enough to call it quits so we headed back to the ramp with some of the others following and headed off home.