Morning PPB session

With the weather promising to be good again in Melbourne I had to take advantage of the conditions and get out there and look for a few more squid, although the threat of a strong ESE wind had me worried after launching the wind stayed as a straight north until about 1100 and then it flattened off to a 5 knot south east breeze which made for a nice drift at the end of the trip.

I arrived at Sorrento at about 0630 with mate Dan who has been on many squidding missions in this part of the bay with me previously, the weather was a stark contrast from Wednesday as Wednesday was bright sun with slightly murky water, on that day I used a Gan Craft 3.5 Red Orange Shrimp that is bright orange with a shimp pattern and because the sun was high in the sky I picked this egi as it was translucent which made the egi stand out in the murky water. Today the water was gin clear and the sky was overcast, so it was back to my trusty Gan Craft 3.0 Pink Shrimp Head, this egi has a gold foil with an ivory body and shrimp pattern with pink head and olive body, the foil was perfect for the water conditions and light and the contrasting colors made for a tasty looking treat for squid.

First cast and I had a small squid of about 25cm hood along side the boat, pretty happy with the results I kept working the same area to land about 5 more of the same size, incidentally Dan managed a slightly better one of about 30cm hood, only hung up by both candles he made the decision to grab the squid by the head rather than lift by the jig. I dont know how he did it but he managed to get ink on just about every inch of the boat and not a drop on him, he got the second wave of the water blast and no ink, after a bit or laughter and banter egi back in the water to land a few more. The area quietened off a bit and the tide was still low we thought a trip to Point Lonsdale was in order to cast a few plastics around and wait for the tide a bit.

With a quick stop at Point Nepean we struggled to get a nice drift with the stiff North blowing us in towards the shore at almost 1km per hour, bit hard to cast a 1/32 jig head and a whiting worm around so we kept on to Point Lonsdale. As soon as we stuck our nose beyond the headland at Queenscliff the water became calm and we were protected by the land from the north. We spent about an hour flicking plastics around for whiting but could only manage to harass a few Wrasse, we were a bit time poor as I had a some stuff to take care of later in the day so we did a quick bolt around to Queenscliff to have a quick squid flick, again first cast with the Pink Shrimp Head Gan Craft 3.5 and I was into the squid again. Only 2 more from the area and we moved back towards Portsea.

Similar results to Queenscliff we found a patch of squid landed a couple and moved on back towards Sorrento as we looked at winding the day up. It was then that we found a Honey hole full of small squid, my mate Dan was after some snapper baits so we took a bag from the area and headed back to the ramp. Productive day squid wise but only average sized squid, looks like we are in between the spawn now and should not expect too many giants until June so I am going to have to settle for practice on the small ones until then.