Report from the Northern NSW Coast
Adreno's newest Northern NSW correspondent, Caine Hutcherson, reports on a recent dive trip with two FANTASTIC fish landed! Caine and Remo both entered their fish into the Adreno BIG 5 competition for a chance to share in over $15,000 worth of prizes. Click here to read more about the competition, view photos of the current entries and get your own entries in!
Although the conditions this year haven't been at their prime for diving, we managed to find a gap in which the vis and conditions just seemed to line up perfectly. On Saturday, we woke up to epic conditions of 2-3knots from the South, and less than a meter in swell which made a smooth ride out to a local reef where we found awesome vis and very warm water.
After swimming around for a for a few minutes I found myself a nice little Blue Barred Parrot fish in the shallows but managed to loose the fish due a poor shot. I reloaded my gun, only to have one of my twin rubbers snap, so I swam back to the boat and grabbed my trusty old 1.5 Edge cannon which was just prime for the clear water.
I decided to do another lap broadening my search for fish out to a bit deeper ground of the reef. Upon finding no quality fish worth hunting I decided to make a break for the boat where I had a nice packed lunch calling out my name, when out of nowhere a medium sized Manta appeared with 3 healthy sized Cobia swimming between me and the boat.
I didn't hesitate in launching the 2 metre shaft into the closest Cobe finding one of my famous tail shots crippling the fish with the shaft only just hanging out the other side, after screaming out to my dive buddy he came over, I grabbed his gun and shot the 2nd shaft into the fish with it running into the reef and bending his shaft like a banana (leaving my shaft with no damage).
We picked up a few other assortments, stopped in and picked up a few crays on the headland before heading in through the bar to dry land. The Cobia went 19.6kg on the scales making yet another PB for the year for myself and cooked up awesome that night fresh on the barbecue.
Sunday brought even better conditions with no wind at all and the flattest we have ever had the headland. On trying to head out to sea we had the tinny deciding it didn't want to play fair and having motor troubles in the river, so a rock hop was the only option. It was a race to who could get in the water first at a favourite rock hop spot as first in the water usually finds the school of Jew and gets first choice (if the fish are even there).
My dive buddy Remo has landed his fair share of school Jew but never one of 10kg, so of course he was first in the water at the spot, him having a bit more fitness then me might of helped a bit too. He managed to find himself a small school of good sized Jew, picking out one of the stragglers and shooting it in the shoulder.
After getting back the line it stripped off his reel gun he found the fish had ran itself to death sitting behind a rock ledge and subduing it with his knife. Finally he had broken the 10kg mark for Jewfish with a 16kg fish to carry home over his shoulder on the long walk back to the car, with a mixture of complaining and cheering the whole way.
2 days, 2 PB's and 2 happy divers.
