NOOSAS FIRST TOP WATER TOURNAMENT KICKS OFF :-) Sat Nov 1st & Sun Nov 2nd, 2014. 30 boats, 60 anglers...Both days reviewed. Session 1: 12:00-6:30pm Noosas second hardest endurance event, the Top Water Tournament started on Nov 1st. The first endurance event being the Triathlon which started along side us although some of us may be feeling like they have just finished a triathlon :-) With myself and Brain entered we started fishing at 12:00 after quick group briefing. We all got a lure pack of 6 lures to share. With names like Berkley, Rios lures, Fish Candy and Sebile we got given some great lures. Shooting upstream we decided to go for whiting while trying to combat 20-30 knot winds! With winds gusting up to 30-35 knots fishing with 2kg line was interesting to say the least! It wasnt long until I started getting interest from the small whiting but these were too small at 20-22cm. After an hour I finally hooked one! A keeper at dead on 23cms! My fish had other plans and I dropped it! To say I was gutted having just dropped our first 23 points in the drink was an understatement with no photos taken! We pulled stumps an hour later having caught over 6 Whiting and lost just as many, all undersized. Motoring to a new spot, every other angler we spoke to said no fish caught, I felt really stupid having dropped that fish. We still wanted a Whiting and at the end of our session at our new spot my Sugapen got monstered by a good sized 35cm fish...Finally!!! on the board at 4pm. We then went to try for a Trevally during the last few hours of daylight. With no fish in the woods bays we headed off to a last chance spot in the last 25 minutes. Upon arrival it wasnt long until there was some serious busting up going on! Brian whipped out his lure and was on! A good sized 41cm Big Eye gave him the run around with him getting out to fight it on a pontoon while I drifted off in his boat with no power! After landing and taking the pics we were on 96 points (20 bonus for all subsequent species caught) which made us feel better. This feeling was short lived when Brian stood on his lure with the treble hook going all the way in! Pliers took care of that and with that I cast out to see my lure get smashed on landing by a smaller Big Eye in the last 5 minutes. Very tired but happy :-) Session 2: 05:00-12:00, Seriously sleep deprived the first spot produced Big Eye after Big Eye with both of us landing close to 10 in under an hour. We hadnt had fishing this good in ages! These were all under last nights 41cm fish and we hoped to snag a different species for more points.....No luck. After some needed food and coffee with went to a new spot and saw more Trevally which gave us the biggest run around! We cast at them for over an hour with no hook up. Upon leaving a boat pulled up and hooked up after the first cast!! Thats fishing..... Setting up a drift along a shallow channel I picked up an undersized Flathead, Tailor, Bream and Whiting! Where were the bigger fish?? These of course were all in the bays at first light with some anglers hooking GT close to 60cm and one of the event organisers hooking a 61cm Golden Trevally! What the?? We cast and cast non stop for hours and I got a smaller 33cm Whiting. Moving off to try our luck back in the bays I got a small Tealeaf Trevally at 10:15am measuring 33cms :-) More points! With multiple lure changes and hundreds of casts we couldnt get another fish. Feeling totally drained of energy we shot back to the briefing point for 12:00 to find out the organisers actually won the event! Keeping the trophies, some beautiful handmade GT lures they donated the Nordic Stage rods and mixed bags of lures back into the prize pool for a lucky dip. Thats sportsmanship! We picked up another bag of lures giving us 6 each with a value of $100 :-) Bonus!!! Overall we didnt get a top finish place but finished with 149 points and a great memory! Top event with great people and a lot more experience under our belts :-) Total number of fish landed 30. Total number of legal or competition size fish.....3
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 09:40:42 +0000
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