MyFish 4-6-09 (Best Fishing Day In My Life)

4-6-09
I believe the best medicine in the world is laughter and fishing, and boy didn’t I get my fair share of that this Thursday!! Known bay island guru and awesome mate Tristan Taylor took me to his second home; the infamous Peel Island, where a little bit of local knowledge goes a long way. Our morning got off to a wet start when a forthcoming downpour greeted us at Raby Bay boat ramp leaving us no option but to retreat to Macca’s for an hour for coffee’s and a quick game of Monopoly. Soon after that the gods gave us a break in the weather (a short one at that) and we were off to Peel, destination south east corner.
This spot has more variations than the Maroons backline with shallow flats, rocky outcrops, steep drop offs and tight structure. I started the morning fishing top-water with a Megabass Dog X Jr in a new colour, Albino Raigyo, while Tristan threw a shallow diving Atomic Hardz Mid 38 in Ghost Gill. It didn’t take us long to be on with Tristan nailing a cracker Bream on his second cast up into the shallows, slow rolling his lure across the rubble bottom. Then the fishing really heated up (least something was hot as we stood in the pouring rain) as we nailed 30 bream in the next hour with the biggest at 35cm to the fork falling victim to the Dog X Jr. The falling rain did little to deter the fish but in fact really turned them rabid as we were almost pulling a fish a cast. We then returned back to the start of our drift at the eastern end of Horseshoe Bay where we took a different angle and chased my favorite winter species…. Squid. Being new to shallow squiding, it didn’t take Tristan long to cotton on to the technique and we spent the next couple of hours filling the bucket with these table delights and laughing our heads off at the numerous ink sprays we copped with the funniest being my squirt in the face when ‘somebody’ left a live one in the bucket, cheers Tristo!! After a while we actually found it hard to get away from the squid as we went back to breaming only to find us hooking squid on top-water with our Dog X Jr.

After the early rains, the afternoon turned on great sunshine as we ended another awesome session at Peel Island. Armed with more knowledge and a new custom squid ink paint job to the boat, we learnt today that toughing out the conditions can be very fruitful. We might have been the one’s stupid enough to be standing in the rain but we had the last laugh…..and squid for dinner!!!