It is hard to put into words, but the month of May will go down in my memory as one to forget from a fishing point of view. Harrowing south easterly winds played havoc pretty much all month forcing cancellations, making alternative options and even the handful of trips completed offshore were extremely challenging. I’m not sure of the exact recordings but the palm trees never stopped bending from the fresh breeze and the beach water even didn’t get close to resembling a blue colour at all. Actually a surf board from off the beach looked more appropriate.
As mentioned we did do a few trips offshore and we did quite well considering the conditions. You definitely needed seasoned sea legs to complete these charters. We caught some pretty impressive large mouth nannygai and cod but the log book saw slim pickings for most of the month. As I write the forecast next week looks far more promising and can’t wait to get amongst it as I predict the fish will be in a hungry mood.
Quite a few clients did opt to change plans in accordance with the weather and we fished up the local estuary. Sometimes people are just happy to wet a line and enjoy their holiday time. Our best creek half day included half a dozen jacks and eight big, fat pikey bream. The best mangrove jack was an impressive 43cm and the bream were all 30cm. Downgrading line class and gear, these fish all performed admirably and providing quite a few smiles, which is what it is all about. Fingers crossed we have more to brag about next month.