paradise

this morning i was reminded of why this is such a special place and how much i love my life here! i decided to go for a fish today and on checking the tides saw it was high tide at about 10:30, i wanted to fish the turn and fall of the tide chasing some barra in the bay, so I chucked a couple of rods in the boat and about mid morning headed out to catalinas to launch. 5 minutes later I was over in the mangroves on the other side of the bay  –   the only boat on the water, a light breeze and sun shining!

I spent a couple of hours working the rocky outcrops and mangroves as the tide started to fall and pull the bait out of their cover, using the electric Minn Kota means its stealth mode and you get to see everything going on in the water, i saw schools of beautiful diamond rays, black backs speckled with white spots, i saw little reef sharks cruising the shallows, schools of mullet and gars, sea eagles waiting for lunch and jabiru storks flying past.

The barra were proving hard to raise, but a beautiful big squid, sparkling iridescent colours, showed more than a passing interest in my soft plastic prawn, but he was too slow and a golden snapper stormed out from a rock and snatched the prawn from in front of the squid, it wasnt long before a mangrove jack was added to the esky and then I had a good battle on light gear with a decent tarpon. in between i caught a few small trevally and a fat old black bream.

I was back at the boat ramp by 1:30 so a quick 3 hours on the water, a wealth of wildlife observed, a couple of nice keepers in the esky, some fish for family on the way home and life is good!