Another Slow Night Session

After a disappointing night fish last week I headed out again on Tuesday night with Rob(RAD) to a new location that had the potential for some good numbers of good fish. The night was nice and sultry and just as the sun went down a line of clouds loomed on the horizon.  Checking the BOM rain radar a line of storms was pushing in from the west and would inevitably arrive at our location.  They seemed to be moving fairly quickly so we made the decision to go ahead with the nights fishing.

We arrived within minutes of each other at the launch point and quickly launched to kayaks before the night got away on us.  Lightning flashed on the horizon but luckily repeated checks of the BOM saw the storms dwindling away to a few patches of light rain.

We made our way upstream with Rob casting his favourite night lure, a black Kokoda Bat and I was casting a Black jointed jitterbug on opposite banks.  Eventually we heard a bass “boof” the surface 30m upstream of our position and the resultant water disturbance was clear in the moonlight.  I quickly cast across the ripples and retrieved the lure over the disturbance to no avail.  Soon after Rob cast in the near vicinity and his bat was smashed by a good bass that was eventually netted and measured a good 43cm.

Even though this was a great start to the night with the bass being hooked within 10 minutes of launching the next couple of hours were virtually dead.  We continued upstream and eventually Rob had a hit that missed the trebles an soon after had an eager bass hit his Kokoda bat three times before hooking up.  He was another good sized fish at 42cm but like the first was very lean and lacked any conditioning at all.  This was similar to the previous night session the week before.

With a donut looming I pondered doing a lure change to Rob and a few seconds later I cast along a banksia growing on a rock in the middle of the river.  The water erupted around the jitterbug and the bass made a beeline for a large tree lying parallel to the nearest bank.  A tough fight eventually saw a 43cm bass arrive yakside.  Like the others it was very lean and it seemed that the bass in this system had not coped so well with the recent high water levels in SEQ and fed infrequently.

We continued upstream and eventually a cast tight to the bank amongst the timber by Rob was nailed by another bass and another 42cm bass was netted to finish the night.  It was a very slow session and a looonnnggg paddle back at 11.15PM at night back to the launch was a killer.  Although the bass were a good size the night session lately have fell far short of the night sessions at the start of summer.