Claude, Andrew and I had organized to go out in Claude’s boat to chase surface fish, but the NE breeze was around so we decided to pick up a few livies just in case we had to bottom bash. We headed out to the islands off Hill 60 and soon spotted some birds working a fair way out SE of Hill 60. As we got closer we could see that the fish below had a big school of bait balled up, and about 1000 mutton birds had figure this out also. These lovely creatures were fluttering over it, sitting on top of it, and diving down into it. Getting a fly in there was going to be hard but Claude positioned us 20m ahead of the North-moving school and I got a fly right in there. After a couple of strips a big salmon grabbed it and the fly line took off as the reel went into overdrive. I must have been out of practice with this, for as I switched the rod to my left hand the bloody reel handle got caught up in my shirt sleeve and that was that. You would think an engineer would know to keep loose clothing out of high speed rotating parts, wouldn't you?
Andrew stepped up and readied himself as Claude repositioned the boat to get ahead of the school again. It was very difficult to get in position to cast at the “melee” (when the fish are busting up on top) as the fish were going up and down very quickly. As we were trying to position ourselves we got a glimpse of a dozen big stripies zooming down the face of a wave, smashing bait as they went. No wonder these fish were so hard to track and get a shot at. The light swell and breeze didn’t help much, but these fish are very hard in this deep water as they are constantly diving and herding the bait before busting up for a few seconds. If you don’t get a fly into the melee, there is no chance of getting them. We did have a couple of decent attempts, but the bastard mutton birds continually thwarted our good casts – we hooked 5 or so, which were unhooked and released unharmed. We chased the stripies around for about 40 minutes but didn’t get a proper shot at them. No sign of the salmon, but they must have been with them. A speedy delivery is what is needed, and this often has to be done at a fair distance.
We got tired of chasing them, so we decided to head into Port Beach and see what was around. There was a huge flock of seagulls diving into a boiling mass about ½ a football field in size. I cast a pink surf candy into the edge of the vast salmon school and hooked a fish immediately. As I was playing the fish, Claude was casting but couldn’t buy a take. I landed the 2kg fish and Andrew had a go, but neither of them could raise a fish to their surf candies. The sun had come out and the true amount of salmon in the water was made apparent – there was probably thousands of fish over 2kg in this pack. An amazing sight. The millions of baitfish that they had herded up were probably whitebait – around 1-2 inches long and barely visible in the water. Because there was so much bait in the water, the salmon were not too keen to chase anything, so we tried slowing our retrieve down a bit. This didn’t work on its own, but if the fly was cast deep into the pack and retrieved with a moderate pace when the fish were busting up, a hookup was almost guaranteed. Despite the numbers of fish, there was definitely no such thing as an easy hookup. The fish fought very hard and when they went deep it was a real slugfest to get them back up to the surface.
I changed to a size 4 polafibre ‘eye’ fly – it seemed a bit small, but was a good match for the size of the bait in the water. After a few casts I had a fish take it on the drop, then another fish took it just as I started the retrieve. I thought that maybe the dead drift was the way to go, but it was much more important to cast the fly right in front of a fish or group of fish so they didn’t have to work too hard to get it. The other good thing about the small fly was that it was really sucked down – 2 fish had it right in their gill rakers when I tried to get it out. As I released the second fish after a long fight, the fish sat on the surface and looked exhausted. As he started to roll onto his side, a mako shark about 4.5ft long came up out of the depths and had a look! The salmon zipped off and the shark circled the boat a few times - Claude contemplated gaffing with his new gaff it while it was swimming (crazy idea), but Andrew was keen to try his new shark fly out on it so we put out some berley while Andrew rigged up. Typically, the shark hung around for long enough for Andrew to tie on his shark fly, but then disappeared – perhaps he got the salmon, though it didn’t seem to hungry otherwise the salmon would have been history right from the start.
All up we caught about 12 salmon from 2kg up to a 60cm, 3kg beast that Andrew subdued after a solid fight. Considering each fish took at least 10 minutes to land, we did well. The fish were feeding for ages – the school split up into 3 or 4 groups and it slowed down a bit, but the feeding went on for probably 3 hours or so. There was even a boat anchored right in the middle of it all, with fish busting up under their bow and everything! Were the fishing for them? No – they had the bottom lines out after god knows what. These dimwits didn’t even know what they were, even though there was 1000 of them zipping under their boat for 2 hours. We told them what they were and held one up for them as we released it, and I think they were a bit surprised at the size of the fish all around them.
The fussy behaviour that these fish showed got Andrew and I thinking about fly design – he reckons it would be good to tie a small whitebait pattern with a floating head so it skimmed though the surface. That would definitely get the salmon’s attention if there is already 10 million other whitebait swimming around underwater. Small Bangers or Gartsides might also go well – it couldn’t hurt to have a good range of small baitfish patterns on hand.
Andrew Susani