We parked up about the middle of Manly beach and started setting up our gear. I just had a spinning rod and intended to bottom fish using squid for bait. Ollie on the other hand set up his shark rod and using his surf board intended to paddle his bait out about 150m. Crazy guy.
This is a picture of Ollie's shark bait ready to go.
Here is a picture of Ollie with his surfboard. The guy in the background was fishing worm and picked up a few whiting.
I held Ollies rod and put the reel into free spool as he paddled the shark bait out. About 100m out he got overturned by a big wave but still managed to recover and paddled further out still. There were guys surfing about 100m either side of us. I was getting a bite every cast but could not manage a hook up so I dropped the hook size down from a 2/0 to a size 1 baitholder. This paid dividends as I managed to hook a bream on the next cast. A quick picture and back it went.
Ollie on the other hand was watching his rod with great anticipation,just waiting for that reel to go screaming off. It was getting dusk by this time and I hooked into a fish and it bit straight through my 15lb mono. Ollie reckoned it was probably a tailor biting me off and suggested I should use a 40lb mono trace. Ollie was spot on with what he said and after a couple of casts I did hook a small tailor,a new species for me so I was well chuffed.
During my 2008 Australian trip I had managed to get 20 species. This tailor now made it 21. Ollies had no runs on his shark bait so as it started to rain we decided to call it a day. On the fishing front it had been a poor trip but I did enjoy the crack with Ollie in great surroundings. About a week ago my daughter had said that the shark alarm had been sounded on Manly beach and that the swimmers had got out of the water but most of the surfers had just continued !!!!!
I have quite a few more reports to write up so hope to add one every week or two.
John
