We cruised out home base and the home bay into a different body of water today.  Milky blue.  Ewan is feeling the pressure.

We’d head back to my island first, and on the way there spot an awesome piece of structure.  A channel between two pinnacles.  In the deep sea this is exactly what you’d be hunting for on the sonar.  Not surprisingly we were straight on, well Ewan was.  Some enormous Cats and Carp off to our left rolling about, teasing me.  I thought I had at least a basic understanding of what to do with a Cat in this situation, but a Carp in deep water erratically going from the depths to just under the surface?  Who knows.

Ewans fish came with two similar sized buddies, Saltwater fish behaviour.  I pinned one that came off and then feeling we’d worked it well we headed off.

A screech from the back.  Damian was on to a cat.  A quick pic and we were on our way.

Around the next corner held the same line of dirty milky water that I love looking for on a permit.  And I was determined to pull flies through it.  Nothing.  Maybe the freshwater fish don’t like that.

We beached quietly at the island and Ewan asked for my spot.  First he stopped at a submerged log and on first cast and strip had the fly inhaled violently.  He’d later tell me he was convinced that cat was the Largie he was after as it took.

The pace had slowed as we got our heads around the more difficult conditions (clarity).  I decided to hunt for clearer water, and so we did.  On the horizon was an interesting looking bay, and we headed over hoping for clear water.  We didn’t find anything of the sort, even though it was shielded from the wind.  What we did find was an platoon of Carp suspended on the surface, patrolling around.  These high water Carp were killing me, and we couldn’t get any interest as we headed out of the the bay, more because of the heat than the refusals.

Damian was on to another cat, this one putting up a far better fight than the last, and, bored by the day Ewan and I settled in for the show and to shout the odds from the bank.   After a good 20 minutes a very excited Damian had his personal best Cat by the bank.

We made a stop or two on the way home, and had figured some correlation between a particular catfish behaviour and the presence of Largemouth.  We also discovered another beautiful submerged reef, on which Ewan decided to catch every Smallmouth yellow i’d failed to catch thus far.

I pulled a largie off the top and the next thing a call for help came over the radio “Mayday Mayday Mayday”  I was on the way to take a pic of Ewans fish and got there at the same time we heard the call.  We bolted back over the rocks to find Damian bobbing around in the water, the duck blown beyond his reach.  His attempt to reach it being foiled by the high waves and wind.  Sanity prevailed and he swam back to shore.  We recovered the boat, picked him up and continued on the island.  He wouldn’t be allowed to forget that one in a hurry.

Humour aside, if you were solo out there you would have had an interesting few days ahead of yourself if that happened.

The monkeys had struck again, and it was getting worse.  This time they’d even taken some cooler box parts with them.