We were presented with a near perfect day for our first ever session on the Bellingen River. We were both enthusiastically optimistic with the prospects of the much larger sections of water we would encounter. So we took the trip down to the boat ramp at Mylstom at 8:30am Saturday morning.
After a nice and easy launch we motored up stream for about 15 miutes and decided to try our luck on the new Pacific Highway bridge and drift down on the incoming tide. Apart from the road noise it was a very plesant day to be on the water. My very first cast was greedily hit by an undersized Dusky Flathead (32 cm) which was a good early sign. So I had one in the boat and we hadn't been fishing more than 5 minutes. Enzo was the next to get a hit, just a few minutes later, which landed him an undersized Dusk Flathead (33 cm) also. We were both very pleased with the early promising results.
However that is were it all ended. If we had packed up then and headed home , we would have caught the exact number of fish we caught all day. Yes that is right just 2 undersized fish.
After our initial catches everything just stopped. We drifted down passed the old Pacific highway Bridge, down passed the Norco factory, Down passed the North Coast railway bridge and all the way back to within sight of the boat ramp at Mylstom. It needs to be noted along the way I was hit numerous times whilst using a Berkley Gulp craw however the fish would always spit out the plastic after 5 or ten seconds of a struggle.
We decided to keep to the western side of the island that is opposite the boat ramp and then motored down further towards the mouth of the river. However the fish still didn't seem to be interested in anything we were throwing at them.
So after a long morning we headed back to the boat ramp at 1:30 pm, very dissappointed in the outcome of our first ever fishing session on the Bellingen River.
So scores remained unchanged as the offical result for the day was a draw.
I really hope these poor results improve soon as the colder winter months are nearly upon us and finding the motivation for spending hours getting cold and not catching fish could prove a difficult task.
Until next time
May it be Big Dusky and on the end of MY line
Could agree more ... very pleasant day but shitty result - back to 'big bend'on Bonville I reckon!
ReplyDeleteHey Geoff just a little bit of info from the other side of the coin, had a crack at the coffs creek today dead low tide just turned back in. 1 hour with soft plastics nothing,2 hours with prawns, 4 legal bream and 4 under.All legals were pan size, i was wrapped, avent caught fish of that caliber for a long time and i think we can thank the floods for depositing some serious debris in the water so there were great size fish hanging around and i will be back there as soon as possible. so unoffiacially im the comparison of bait versus soft plastics. i will keep you posted as to when you should change back!
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