YakFishWest

It had been a month since I had been out in my kayak and 7 weeks and more than 30kms of paddling since  I had caught a fish. Plans were laid for a Saturday morning dawn assault. I woke to find a breeze stiff enough to send me back to bed. I had to settle for a fruitless evening landbased session. Disheartened I didn’t set an alarm for Sunday. I woke up to find a perfectly still morning! Within an hour I was launching into Dampier harbour eager to end my run of donuts.

100m metres from the ramp I noticed some fish milling around on the surface before I had a chance to act my trolled lure was taken. No sooner had i grabbed the rod something else scoffed whatever I had hooked! With my hopes up I continued to troll across the the channel towards East Intercourse Island (EII) wary of the tugs headed my way. Just as I got clear of the channel another hit, the little school mackerel was no match for my heavy trolling gear but a fish none the less.

Nice little School Mackerel

I dealt with the mackie just in time to turn and face the wake of the tugs.

Trolled my way around EII towards the ore wharf . I was on the look out for manta rays and hopefully cobia. Cobia fishing this spot has been featured on Fishing WA a few years ago. I got blown away here by a 15kg cobia the previous week when we spotted a manta here while out in a mates boat.

I changed lures to a 8m+ scorpion and after a bit of tune up I was under way again. The scorpion got hammer! I set the hooks into a solid fish, the yak lurched around and and i held on for the ride! Fairly confident the hooks were set i put the rod down and cranked in my other trolling line. I settled in for the fight by it didn’t quite feel right… there was plenty of weight but it was swimming strangely.

Sure enough about 10minutes later i had colour…

Big Shark! By far the the biggest fish I have caught on the yak. While it circled under the yak I took the opportunity to test my new underwater camera with awesome results. I brought it to the surface and it took off again and again, a couple of times drenching me in the process.

Eventually it tired enough to get it in for a closer look. A grey reef shark maybe a metre and a half long.

My lure was well and truly hooked in the corner of its jaw. The thought of sharp teeth, trebles and a thrashing shark didn’t really appeal to me so I cut the line. I rerigged and started to loop back around I trolled out to a current line where I spotted surface activity but couldn’t find any action when I got there. At the point of EII I spotted a school of mackies but they were so close the act of reaching for a rod spooked them. When I retreived my lures ready to land I found a small barracuda hooked on one. I don’t know how long I towed it around for but it self released yakside.

Cheers

Swamp

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