Well I just got back from Sydney and must say that it was well worth the 2000 km round trip that I kicked off on Friday. Arriving in Sydney I met up with my brother and then the casting guys, Jason & Gary to organise the events for Saturday which saw the agenda set for casting in the afternoon and then to head down the beach to see what we could rsutle up in the evening and night session.
To say that the casting was uncomfortable due to the heat and humidity would have been a bit of an understatement but still well worth it. Scott Selby came up from Berkley and put on a great dsiplay hitting some sweet cast out to 250+ meters for both the 150 and 125 gram leads. We also had young Ed meet up with us and he was working out his ground casts.
The field that we were casting at is Gary's usual and is boredered by the express way and a mangrove swamp fortunately the wind on this day allowed us to cast towards the mangroves so there was no issues in relation to safety. As mentioned earlier this allowed Scottt to belt out a number of sweet casts with a simple highswing and turn similar to what we have come to see from the likes of Andy Copping, and like Andy the distances were impressive.
Gary was doing it tough after a hard week at work laying tiles and mixing cement so his timing wasn't up to his usual standard untill later in the session when he started to relax and posted up a number in the 220+ meter range. Jason was also casting well and was hitting some nice casts with his SS , I'm not sure what weights Jason was casting but I think it was the 150 gram.
It was a top afternoon even though the heat made it necessary to have plenty to drink and I made sure that I was well hydrated as we intended to head down towards Woollongong for a session down on the beach. The heat of the day did have a spin off benefit in the fact that we were fishing in shorts an light shirts something we don't normally do back in Victoria .
(Jason on the beach with his Sonic and Avet combo)
AS is my luck lately the tides were wrong wiith a falling tide and lower than average water temprature so the guys were saying that our chances weren't looking that good, so instead of taking out too many rods I simply used my new Century HPR 12' Carp rod mated with the Daiwa Exceller 4500 loaded with 6 pound distance and casting 3 oz leads.
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Century HPR and Daiwa )
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Daiwa on the HPR with the new APS winch fitting , great bit of kit )Gary also opted to take it easy and was using his Daiwa three piece and his Saltiga surf loaded with braid. It was interesting to see the formation of the beach and how it differs from what we encounter in Victoria so the necesity to belt the leads out wasn't called for this time around.
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Jason looking happy with a bait in the water )
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Gary and another local hopefull )
The fishing was slow right along the beach and even though there were a number of fishermen strung along its length there were only a few small ( By local standards ) salmon taken during the time we were on the water. As luck would have it i was one of the lucky anglers to take a fish and had fun landing the fish on the Century and Daiwa combo , with the light line the fish was a lot of fun.
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Yours Truely with the sole Salmon for the session )
We had a bit of fun with the camera and Jason trying to work it out in the dark but we did get it sorted in the end.
The video footage from the casting will take a bit longer to post up but it should be interesting as we had a few funny moments as well as the usual stuff.
Looking forward to my next road trip