[wongus]

After not having been on the water for a few weeks I was keen to wet the yak and sort out the cobwebs in preparation for the Cressbrook weekend next week.

Launched off the beach near the Paradise Point shops a little before 6am under perfect conditions. Trolled the length of Ephraim Island with a baby vibe and a soft plastic for nil result. Changed lures to an SX48 and Manns 5+ at the Northern end of Ephraim and saw some mangrove lined banks on the far shore that looked promising. So far it had been a nice morning paddle against the last of the run out tide.

However, once I got to the far bank the sounder was only showing around 3ft....

This is when it got exciting but not in a good way!!!. Saw a huge catamaran ferry bearing down on me about 150m away at good speed and in the shallow water I would be in trouble. I quickly paddled across the channel (about 25m) to get back into deeper water. I could see the gap between the twin hulls like a huge cave coming to swallow me up. The *&%&$ wasn't even slowing down... I managed to clear the channel marker with the ferry breathing down my neck and I quickly swung the swing around to face the oncoming bow waves.... Alas I still had the lures behind me and of course they were now in the wake of the ferry and being floating divers were now in the direct path of the ferry. Moment later both rods started whining in protest with line disappearing at knots. I had no choice but to clamp on the spool of both reels resulting in a nasty cut to the finger due to the braid (thankfully only 6lb so it snapped pretty easily).. and watched as the ferry continued unabated at speed with my SX48 and Manns 5+..... Not to mention I had only spooled up with new braid the night before.

You can imagine I was pretty dejected and fished half heartedly against a now stiff breeze to the Hope Island boatramp. The cut to the finger didn't make paddling comfortable so I rang up for an early pickup and was off the water by 8.30...

All in all still a good paddle to loosen the joints and get a bit of a workout but think I'll be following the Dodge's lead in seeking quieter waters when weekend fishing on the coast.

 

[Peril]

Ouch!

Sorry to hear that Danny. Could you not have rode out the wake in the shallows? The rivercats in Sydney Harbour steam along but they don't throw up a lot of wake - one of the good things about cats.

 

[DGax65]

Some cats create a very nasty wake. I discovered that a couple of years ago when the US Navy was testing an Australian-built, high-speed catamaran transport here in San Diego. That beast came churning out of the harbor mouth as I was coming back in. She was already doing at least 20 kts when she passed me. I have paddled near other cats before and I've always though that they produced smaller wakes than a similarly sized single displcement hull. Mabye it was just the speed, but that was the nastiest wake I've ever gone through. I took the first first wake head on. As I came up on top, I was shocked to see how deep the trough was. The second wake seemed to come right on top of the first. Quite a rollercoaster ride. As she passed I could see how the wakes off of each hull interacted. There was an enormous standing wave running a short distance behind her. I think that this translated into some very large waves at points along the wake. As I'm sure Wongus was thinking; it would not be good to get hit by a big wake just as it hits shallow water :shock:

 

[troppo]

What a bummer, Wongus. I would feel gutted losing the lures. And getting cut!

DGax65, nice pic of a fast cat. Heading right at ya!

 

[Dodge]

Danny you have had an encounter with the Couran Cove ferry by the sound of it and she certaintly throws up a wash alright, and bad luck on the lure loss.

As you said there are plenty of places other than the Broadwater washing machine on the weekend.

See you next week at Cressbrook and offer some local suggestions, and if I think of it I'll throw a couple of GC charts in the van

 

[RedPhoenix]

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

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[wongus]

That's a great link Red but I was a bit like a cornered animal with no where to go.. it could only end in disaster.. much like when we were kids and silly enough to catch those huge shorebreaks... You're on top of the wave... you look down the crest and see only sand and think... oh (_&*^&(^!!... the wave crashes and you get wiped out seriously

 

[paffoh]

Glad to see you made it out alive, pity it cost you some tackle :?

Sounds like a nice place to paddle on a quiet day...