12 September 2010

Big Pro-Fishing protest in Coffs Harbour today to highlight commercial, recreational and spearfishing opposition to unscientific expasion of marine sanctuary areas. We decided to get a dive in before the rally. Michael and I launched from Arrawarra and went looking for some of the monster crays we have been finding. It is a well recognised trapping area and we encountered several traps in the area with a lot of them having only 1 cray inside. We dived for a long time investigating all the nooks and crannies and only found 3 crays. Not nearly as productive as it has been. We dived co-operatively, one up, one down and carefully searched the area and in spite of this the crays were thin.

Very little current and the viz was not too flash. Moved to a spot on Chopper to look for pearl perch. Found lots of bait: bulls-eyes with sawtail in tow. Found the yellow-spotted sweet-lips which is always a good indication of the presence of pearlies. I found 1 reasonable pearly which was quickly knocked over. Thought I saw a snapper and followed from the surface but it was gone when I dived. Headed back early to go to the rally.

1 September 2010

First day of Spring and I get to go diving, can it get any better? I was hanging around at home when Chris called and asked me to go for a dive off Look-at-me-now Headland. Conditions seemed good with a little more swell and wash which should suit the jewfish. Truth be told, I wanted to see where Chris dives because he always comes away with some good crays and fish. True to form he found a heap of crays, same principle as elswhere, dive down, swim around looking for cracks then collect crays. There are a large number of undersized crays in this area and I hope all divers are respecting the rules. We had a large quantity of burley and were hoping to attract a snapper. It was just not meant to be. Had lots of bait around with tarwhine scavenging on the bottom and eventually even a moray eel and some rays but not a single snapper. The gutters in this area are spectacular and it is fascinating to swim over shallow rocks only to find a deep pebble lined bowl right next to the rocks. This place should hold good numbers of jewfish when conditions are favourable.

We should start to see the water warming again. After the floods we seemed to have an unusually high level of silt around but the storms since then appear to have cleared it away. The water is cool but not cold and the viz is not bad either. I am looking forward to a good season especially considering the massive quantity of bait around.