12/3 Northern Bay Cods

[PROS]

A good friend of mine come from Ballarat/VIC for a visit.
Weather looked good for Sunday morning.
Left Scarborough ramp 5.30am to chase estuary cod for dinner.

Glass conditions, took no time to hit the fishing grounds.
Caught bait straight away and hit hard immediately by a large cod.
My friend didn't realise the amount of pressure a big cod puts up, by the time rod was removed out of the holder and started fighting fish was gone.
Second drift hit hard again, this time better fighting but spat hook halfway assuming the cod was lip hooked only.

We started seeing surface activity. Few groups of mackerel doing rounds around the vicinity and splashing. Don't like mackerel, decided not to get frustrated with them.

Things went bit quite as tide slowed down.
No action through the slack tide.
Caught a mid size cod as soon as run started again.
Then I went over a show of 3 distinct arches. I just imagined they are 3 individual cods sitting together that you see in videos.
Drifted this spot immediately and caught the cod I just imagined, very satisfactory result.
Dinner main sorted

We started seeing tuna busting up by now.
I though we should have sashimi for dinner entrée,
Kept seeing this school of longtails doing clockwise rounds heading to the wind.
No way I can approach them motoring so drove around them and headed about 500m away for a planned quite drift into them.
400m... 300m.... 200m..... surely this will work like all the other times before....
then comes this boat flat out from nowhere drives straight and over the school, school disappeared immediately
few seconds later they started busting literally 20mts from my boat so I cast a livey straight onto them with immediate hook up.
After about 5 mins, just as I was thinking entrée sashimi sorted for sure this lucky tuna spat the hook.

Had a great day.
Glassed out bay all morning.
Back at the ramp by midday.
No pics as it looks the same as any other estuary cods.

Dinner was excellent.
Bait at the bottom is still limited but bay is producing again.

I can only assume there is a large crab count in the bay as I saw many legal crab floating on surface and cods are full of crabs.

Max The Turk

[jackson4300]

Sounds awesome, am yet to get a cod or longtail from the bay. Have had a few fruitless trips... but it's posts like these that give me something to get myself out there and have another crack, so thanks for posting!

[Rainbowrunner]

great report max