What an awesome day on the water!
This morning I once again attempted an offshore trip of the much anticipated Palmy Reef. I had always wanted to try this out seeing the awesome variety of fish others have caught here. It had always been on my bucket list.
Waking up at 3:30 am and finally left the driveway at 4 am I made the cautious stop at the Servos to get some sea sickness chewies. I got to the Currumbin Boat ramp around 5:30 am. The sun was just about to peek over the horizon as I launched the jetski and breathed in the chilling morning air. What a beautiful morning it was to be on the water. I opted to sit at the ramp for the next 30mins as I didn’t have nav lights. I made the most of that time to tie all my rigs up ensuring every knot was 100%.
On sunrise, I followed a few other boats out the bar. I was extremely nervous as I knew the bar could get really shallow. On finally getting out I was full of exhilaration. I was looking forward to tangling my knots with some massive fish. I had no idea where palm reef was so followed the crowd. It was only a couple hundred meters off the beach. I was actually a bit scared as the water was pitch black.. deadset black! What’s lurking down there? I fearfully wondered.
On arriving at the reef my trusty lowrance sounder lit up… like wow!!! Now that’s a reef! First couple of drops of the bait jig I managed a few yakas; to me they were normal size. Then…. I hooked onto something pretty hefty. My head was thinking… baby snapper baby snapper! To my amazement the yakas here were huge! I pinned two of them to my two live bait rigs. One floated away from me via a suspended balloon the other directly underneath. While waiting I loaded up my bait jig with these awesome yakas. Dam! they fight hard! Harder than bream! Little rockets they were. I didn’t catch anything decent at that reef although returning several times during the day. I did pull up some weird and wonderful little reefies which I had never seen before. Two of which was some sort of trevally and the other a Spangled Emperor.
Halfway through the day, I made the most of the glassed conditions by heading out further. Up to this point, I haven’t yet known how to use the GPS. I had decided to head out blindingly towards the 30m mark. Unlike Moreton Bay which I was accustomed to; there were no markers or beacons to throw metals at. I opted to stop by a little rubble patch I saw on the sounder. Pinning a live yaka by the nose I sent him down to the seafloor for a scout. 10mins in something took my line sharply. Within seconds it had swallowed the livey and bit me clean off through 40lb. My guess Mr Sharky ? 🤷🏻♂️
Around 1 pm the winds picked up so I called it quits and headed back towards the bar as there weren’t anyone else left on the reef. To my amazement, the bar was closed off. It was way too shallow. There was no way in the world I’d get back in. I turned back out and scouted around hoping the tide might change soon. I rode up to the Tallebudgera bar just to check it out. It too was inaccessible. I returned to Palm Reef and filled up my bag limit on yakas (20pp).
On returning to the bar at 2:30 pm I realised that it was still running out hard! It was going to take a few more hours before I’d have any hope of getting in. Myself and another jet skier plowed in zigzagging the deep trenches. We eventually beached up halfway in. Both of us jumped in and push/dragged our jetski in while timing it with the tide to get clearance.
We finally made it in. I was wet waist-deep. Making the best of the bad situation I took my shirt off and attempted deep water re-entry. Water was freezing but I jumped in and managed to climb back in from each side of the ski. Very very happy as I have been paranoid about getting back in for a while now.
I finished up 3:30 pm and headed home feeling exhilarate with a bag of 20 huge yakas!
