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I had round two at Mornington yesterday gents, after deciding to give Ricketts a wide berth because of those pesky cyclists. Bloody human powered vessels!! Anyways, a stiff southerly met me first up, and the washing machine didn’t yield much of note apart from a nice red mullet. Plenty of small coutta and pinkies also filled the scene. The southerly went to sleep about 4pm and gave me some prime time mooching, although it was still mostly littlies on offer. About half an hour before dark I was trolling back to my launch when some big weighty reel pulses snapped me awake. The rod tip bent with each pulse, but whatever was hooked hadn’t woken at that point. My mindset had me thinking big old red (what Mango isn’t thinking this at the moment), and I grabbed the rod as some more pulses took line. Then I had a WTF moment as I gawked back down the troll trail to see surface splashing. Snapper go deep so maybe this was….a seal? Then, to use age old gold, the reel screamed. And screamed. And screamed. And…(I guess ya get the picture). There was also a wap-wap noise kind of like water on a stinkboatie’s hull or something flapping in the wind. This thing was a bullet in the water. Then he had his first leap…a thresher cleared the water about 35m behind me. And I mean cleared the water, he would’ve easily goosed a jumping dolphin. He’d released his run, and I released my bowels. Then there were sounds of wap-wap and a little Shimano working overtime. His second aerial was about 20-25m off to my side…he’d stolen a tonne of line to cut a diagonal path. This was a near on meter jump that I got a real good look at. I go 1.75 m tall by 1.75 m wide, and on the height factor I wouldn’t get much change in a toe to toe. Conservatively I put him at 1.5m long, although his long tail could have easily put him up to 2m. And powerfully quick. As I said I go 1.75 m wide so can hold my own in a belly whack….but he would have goosed me on the splash after finishing with the dolphin. Then the line went slack, and so did my bowels for a second time. I’m not sure if at that point he’d bitten through braid…but to my mind I had him coming towards me. By then I’d managed to get my knife out of my PFD pocket and cut the slack line loose, and made a long, long paddle over a short distance back to shore. Back on the dry I rang HobieVic who’s more experienced with shark stuff. He put my mind straight it was a thresher (I’d called him for a mako with his aerials despite his tail shape). Scott also told me how they come into PPB to chase snapper and snook. We also yakked through a coupla other questions I had in my mind. First why would he take a pissy 9cm lure. We put this down to me having hooked a snook or couta without realising it as this had happened several times throughout the day. I’d also wondered how my light leader (4kg mono) would hold. We answered this one by thinking he’d got himself wrapped up in a braid main (probably at the surface splashing stage). On the drive home I also wondered about the wap-wap, and could only come up with braid cutting through the water. I’m a shutter bug and like my pic’s…despite crapping myself I’d really love to have that one of his second jump (no way ya could time a shot like that). Kind of doesn’t matter though, as it’s etched in me noggin for awhile at least. I started with zero interest in shark stuff, and now I have zero interest in bold type (aswell as some washing to do). You guys who deal with these leaping power and speed merchants are nuts!!
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