Paradise in a Storm

You may see in the news over there that Victoria had its worst storm in 40 years of so some would say, for three crazy casters it was just another opportunity to put skill from the field to use on the beach.

Heres the report

Well three brave souls went out to face the ever challenging weather that is what we have come to expect from Victoria but must say that we didn’t quite expect what we had dished up to us.

With all the warnings being put up on the news and weather channels one would have expected that any sane people would have stayed at home and done something less daunting . But as we are all tournament casters as well as fishermen some would see us less than sane.

The drive up to Sale saw us following a similar path to the storm front and must say that the hail , lightning and rain that came down were something else. However the ever reliable Toyota that I have the privilege of driving took it with ease and at no stage did I thing that we wouldn’t get to our destination, though the falling trees, flooded roads and limited visibility did slow us down.




( Rearward view of the storm front coming up behind us as from the side window of the Toyota )





( The road starting to flood from the car window as we drove through to Sale )

As our luck held we were able to get to Sale with only one accident of a tree falling into the path of an ambulance on the freeway ( No one hurt to our knowledge ) and the service centre that we had a coffee break at getting flooded as their doors locked open as the storm hit sending hail and rain streaming into it. Thankfully they were in clean up mode as we were still able to get the much needed coffee that would help us see through the evening session.

The weather gods did look down on us and took pity as we didn’t cop the full force of the storm and thankfully the surf was very reasonable given the wind forecasts we had been expecting to be casting into gale force wind.





( Mark “ Gummy “ Johnson setting up his Zziplex and ABU 10000 with the storm front building all around )

Results for our efforts were reasonable and we did get a bit of action from a number of different species throughout the night, no real show stoppers but plenty of activity to keep us going hoping for the big one.






( Mark with the first one for the Night , much smaller than his previous sessions but great to see the little ones in the system )

Graham amazed us once again with his ability to pull a Flathead out where we would have expected it. Sadly it was only a small one but with good bait and conditions being better than we had anticipated he held out hopes of getting into something much better.





( Yet another Flathead to add to Graham’s tally )

As it turned out the night only produced smaller gummies for both Mark and I as well as the usual assortment of rays and smaller sharks that we have been taking in our previous outings.







(Yours truly with the small Gummy taken on my Squid and garfish cocktail bait.)






( Banjo Shark “ Fiddler ray “ taken with my Tip Tornado Super match )





( Mark with a slightly bigger Gummy taken during the night )





( Baited up pulley rig showing the 7/0 circle clearly exposed and rig ready to cast )

It was good to put the casting practice to use in the wind though it didn’t hit us anywhere near what we had expected . Rigs set with 6 oz grip leads and using clipped down baits were easily sent out to the gutter that was close to shore. Based on the prior weeks results I decided to fish the closer bank as the beach formation had put the outer sandbar further out and the beach had deepened a lot in close. Therefore there was no need to try and belt the rigs out . I do however normally fish wit two outfits putting one in close and the other out past the breakers or outer sand bar. Given the amount of electrical activity and the open nature of the beach we decided discretion would be a bit safer and limited ourselves to one rod apiece and had them set much lower in the stands than what is normal for us.





( Mark having a safety brealk during the hight of the electrical storm with the rods laid down and him sitting further up on the dunes )





(Another small banjo taken during the night at this stage it had cleared for a short period and we were amazed at how warm the evening was )

Another interesting visitor for the night was a lone dog that was racing along the beach , obviously scared by the lightning and thunder in the area. He decided we were a good bunch of blokes and sat around whilst we fished through till around 3.00 am






( The pooch that decided we weren’t a bad bunch of blokes to hang with during the night )

So as it turned out the weather gods were very kind and held of the worst till after we finished the session. And even though we didn’t get into any big fish we had a top session with plenty to keep us wanting to come back for more. And for three slightly crazy casters & fishermen Paradise beach once again made us feel like we really were in a fisherman’s paradise.



Roll on next weekend .

brilliant report and fishing as usual! well done!

if the fishing was that good here i would have went out,

nice Report Jeremy.... That's some serious weather to be out fishing in. Anything for the big one

brilliant report sir, great set up and fintastic result .

excellent reports lads , and ye deserve to catch goin out in that weather