Off The Rocks - July 2003

Off The Rocks

July 2003

I managed to wake up early Sunday morning , even though the night before was spent tying as many pig flies as possible. I had my mandatory 2 cups of tea , raced around organising rods reels fly lines as usual, never enough time the day before, just leave it to the last minute that way I'm bound to forget something.

While I manage to account for everything I left myself a little short of time for our meeting at Elizabeth Bay shops, no thanks to Dave’s directions (Dave’s Note… the directions were without fault… the navigation…. Well….!), very dubious indeed, right spot wrong street 6.30 am no chance, fortunately I wasn't the only late arrival.

We piled into a few cars and headed to our chosen spot. What seemed to be a perfect winters day only seemed to get better as we rose over the hill and laid eyes on a spectacular ocean. Schools of Salmon busting the surface. Birds working the schools of bait fish while the sun had already poked its head up over the horizon, our rock ledge looked great with enough swell and white water pushing in to give the fish plenty of cover and keep us all interested. Things were looking good.

There was a sharp edge to the winter chill but the walk down certainly put pay to any thought of being cold. I'm sure everyone had warmed up by the time we hit the platform. We pulled the rods out and mixed up the berley, then threw substantial amounts of berley into the selected washes. Bread flies were tied onto 20lb fluorocarbon tippets on 8-10 weight rods. This was standard equipment for getting down and dirty with drummer, or pigs as they are affectionately known. Always the chance encounter with some real studs and even 10 weight rods and 25lb fluorocarbon can make you feel a little inadequate.

We spread ourselves out over the platform, some went north, some went south and a few of us in the middle. We had nine starters, which was probably just enough.

It took a while for the berley to do the job but the bites started coming our way. After the first hour quite a few of us has managed some good bites, then Dave and Bob churned in soon after with a kilo plus pig each. Not long after Bob managed another pig that was pushing close to 2kg. I was getting some good bites then hooked a real stud that snapped 25lb fluorocarbon like it was cotton.

While this was happening Wilbur managed a nice pig and Brett nailed a really good blackfish. Photos taken and another fish into the rock pool. I tied a straight 40lb leader on as I had a gut feeling there were some good fish in my wash and fortunately I was right and a few minutes later a good pig around 2.5kg was doing its best to get me back under the ledge with him. The 40lb leader did the trick a bit of a gamble I have to admit but luckily everything held together and we managed to land him.

Wilbur managed another good pig on the north end while John Cunningham landed a rock cale, his first I think. As the day wore on the fish were getting harder to entice. Dave got 2 cales and a yakka but John Humphries, Jerryn and Matty weren’t having much success. Jerryn came up and fished my wash for a while and hooked 3 pigs in a row. Unfortunately the hooks pulled on all fish, but he did really well. Jerryn has got a lot of patience for a young bloke and he’s not too bad with the fly rod. Don’t know where he gets that from, must have got it from his mother, hey Hamish?

I think Matty had his Chris Bannerman mask on because he never looked like catching a pig all day. Still he’s got the runs on the board, bad luck mate.

As the morning progressed the tide was getting lower, cover was more exposed and the fish harder to entice so we called it a day around lunch time.

We cleaned the fish and packed up ready for the steep climb out, it was a hard slog up the hill, but we all managed it back to the cars. Looking back at the morning we had I felt it was a really successful day - great weather, plenty of fish, great mates, what more could you want? I’ve said it before, you’ve just gotta get out there and have a go! Who knows what is going to happen. At the end of the day I think we ended up landing six pigs, three rock cale, one blackfish, one yakka and two wirrah cods. Not bad at all. I’d say lets do it again soon.