I headed out on my kayak onto a glassy Cockburn Sound on Saturday afternoon, hopeful of landing my first snapper in many months, but not really expecting a good result. Times are tough and the snapper are not that hungry …
I reached my mark at about 5.00pm and was once again rewarded with the common sight of fish on the sounder. I say common, because I have found these fish on nearly every trip I've done in the last 8 weeks, but have rarely been able to tempt them into biting. This time I was armed with an 8" squid fly. The fly was tied by Tony Ong and given to me in an act of kindness (Thanks Tony). I roll-cast the fly on a sinking Rio Leviathan 400gn line to the last location I had seen the fish in and waited for 40-odd seconds while it sank towards the bottom. After a couple of short strips, the line went tight - finally! I lifted the rod a little and stripped a small amount to set the hook, but there wasn't much need for it: the fish was running hard and the hook was well set in its mouth. Immediately, the fish started heading behind the yak and I swung the yak around with the rod providing the steering for me.
I quickly set about winding in the slack line in my lap while playing line out through my rod-hand until the reel was eventually connected to the fish directly, at which time I could let the reel's drag look after playing the fish. By this time, I had quite a bit of speed up as the fish towed me around in a wide arc. I wound the drag up to a setting where I could apply some hurt to the fish even if it took line. I was not afraid of snapping the 20lb flouro tippet I was running by this time and was quite confident by now of getting the fish yak-side.
The long-handled net I bought when I got into fly fishing was now paying its way. A nine foot rod doesn't offer much control when the fish is this close to the yak, so getting the fish on board requires either deft line handling skills (which I don't have) or a long-handled net (which I do have …)
Seeing as I had not caught any fish for some time, I kept this one to feed the family. Upon cleaning the fish, I discovered perhaps one reason why the fish are not eating anything I throw to them this year; this fish had huge reserves of fat in its flesh and under the skin of the belly. The buggers are on a diet for summer!
The fish was 90cm long and weighed in at 7.9kg. Its tail was massive, which is why it was able to tow me around so easily.
Cheers,
Graeme
