19 January 2010

This is my first post for the new year. This weekend provided several opportunities to go diving. Our first dive trip was a bit of an adventure. On Friday we towed a boat up to Broom's Head and launched off the beach. My wife kindly took the trailer back to Arrawarra for our return later that day. We had decided to make an entire day of spearfishing and explore lots of reef that sees little diving pressure. Unfortunately conditions precluded much of the area we would have targeted and poor sea conditions limited our scope. We did see dorado at the Wooli FAD but they were very nervous and I only managed to drop one on an early dive. The continental shelf was as dirty as it was inshore and the current there was neary 6km/h. I took a reasonable tarwhine for my trouble at one of the shallow reefs. We dropped into Woolgoolga for lunch then headed out again to look at the shallow reef in the area. There was absolutely nothing worth mentioning.

On Saturday I convinced my son Reece to join me for a dive around Korora and he seemed to have enjoyed the experience. We found lots of Wobbegongs, no crayfish but we did find several abalone which made it a worthwhile trip.

On Monday I went out with a friend and we were very keen on finding some Spanish. Conditions were not what you would expect to see them in however. It was cooler then it had been in quite a while and there was lots of particulate matter and comb-jellies in the water. We started at Pig then moved along to Park Beach Bommie and finally to Split before deciding we were wasting our time in the deeper water. I had a small yellowtail and Kelvin a yellow-spot sweetlips. Kelvin is an absolute task-horse and was game to continue diving in spite of poor conditions. We decided to move into the shallows and see if our luck improved. What a great call. At the first shallow area we explored we found lots of large scattered rocks with many sand gulleys and depressions between. It was not long before I bumped into the first jewfish of the day. I found them on 2 more occasions but if you are not on the bottom stalking them before you see them, forget it. Kelvin did pick up a crayfish though. The next area had little in the way of gutters and we found no jewfish but another cray was added to the bag. The next jump was in the area I had dived with Reece, so several more abalone were added to the bag. I had some description of a potential gutter in the area and swam in at one end with Vinnie at the other. In the confusion that followed he lost a jewfish and landed another as about 80 fish charged passed him! We then moved to an area that is very pretty to dive and holds a number of crays. I scoured the area, and eventually picked up a large cray before we moved again. This time we cornered the jewfish in an arena type area where they milled around under the white water allowing us to take 3 fish out of the school. I was able to knock over a tailor in the confusion too. The haul for the day was not massive considering the size of the fish but we had fun and came away with some newly gleaned knowledge and a pile of delicious seafood.