Snapper September

An unnatural duration of time has transpired since my last kayak fishing outing (a few weeks) and as such, it all seemed a little surreal to be prepping my kayak at 1st light Saturday morning - especially given the perfection that was the weekend's weather. Winter has come to a grinding halt here on the Nth Coast and the scent of spring permeates the air.

Its an ideal time of year for kayak fishing off Brooms Head, especially if your given target is snapper. Thats exactly what Albert, Aaron and I were chasing and we had the whole weekend to do it. This didn't turn out to be completely true for Aaron, however, because his Saturday morning launch was sidelined in short order when a TI/trailer/wheelcart combo accident occurred, damaging the scupper holes of his Tandem Island. So as he drove off to Maclean Outdoors to get it fixed, Alby and I proceeded to head out and went on to catch enough fish for the 3 of us... and then some.

We worked hard to get them though, covering a lot of water in our pursuit of activity. After milling around in close for some time we sailed off to the North to check out Shelleys beach, some 10+km to the north, fishing out wide as we made our way back. Most of our catch was returned - small snapper, rock cod, Sgt baker & pike, but both of us came in with 2 good fish each - mine nudging the 60cm mark, his more like 70... one of them sporting a very impressive knobbed head and snout. Aaron had returned from Maclean and got his TI on the water just as we were coming back in and it was good to see him back in action. He would stake his claim the following day.

It was hard to believe how flat and clear it was out there Sunday morning and the fishing was tough to being with but when the wind picked up and the water surface wrinkled over fish started biting. Aside from the by-catch, all the usual suspects from the previous day, I managed a couple of hardy bonito and another good snapper measuring somewhere between 50 - 60cm (pictured above). Alby had an absolute cracker of a day, finding success in using a drogue to slow his drift speed just enough to get his jigging lures down low, catching 5 good snapper varying in size, two of them suitably large (around the 80cm mark). Although I was long gone before he returned (so I never got to see it) Aaron caught at least one stonking snapper himself, apparently just as big. It's highly unfortunate that I missed seeing this, even more unfortunate that although I got to witness one of Alby's more impressive fish, I neglected to catch it on film (although I thought I was doing so, my camera fooled me). I didn't even get a chance to snap a still shot, so I can't really offer anything to convey how impressive one of these fish looked (it was the knobbiest thing I have ever seen), take it from me that it was significantly bigger than the fish you see Alby holding in the photo above.

This is why I refer to this time of year as 'remember remember, snapper September'

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