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Salmon and Bream Heaven - Diving Bass Point

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Shadowkiller

Digital Hunter
Jul 30, 2002
1,272
267
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Awake at 7am. Dark. Cold. Bugger diving.

Awake at noon. Lovely day, can't see any whitecaps on the ocean. Must be time to go diving! I ring my mate Ben and we finally work out what the real time is. Daylight savings.. brrr.

Get out to Bass Point at 2.30pm and find horrible conditions. Swell is in excess of 30cm. Very poor for Bass Point.:D
Water temp is 18 degrees. Viz about 4-5m

There are a couple of line fishos in position underneath the jetty so I take the long way around. Viz is about 2-3m underneath the main structure where concrete is loaded onto ships. No kingies. No fish of any sort. I play around with diving after exhaling and find that I can sink simply by exhaling. My weights need reducing.

Ben and I decide to swim across the little bay to check out a few holes for Bream and Luderick. We had seen some Salmon there previously so it was worth a shot.

Visibility is improving by the meter as we swim across and I end up slightly ahead. I come across a small rock that forms a ledge about 7m down where I can just make out a Groper hanging around. I dive down to make an administrative kill. Its good practice and the Groper dont seem to care. I take the "shot" but also spot two strange looking rocks that are moving. I move closer and can make out the side fins. Bream! Drifting further down I end up about 2m behind and 1m above the two fish. Big ones too. I aim and nail the biggest one just behind the head. It stops and quivers. Game over. I show Ben but can't make out what he mutters. After stringing the fish I follow Ben further up the coastline.

After struggling against the current for a while I catch up to Ben and find he has shot at something but missed. Just as Im wondering what he shot at, a school of several hundred Aussie Salmon surrounds us. That answered my question. I follow a portion of the school as it splits off and manage to miss twice before hooking a 3-4kg fish through the middle. Crappy shot but even with a 10cm lead I gave it the fish was still too quick for a head shot. For revenge the *#@!!**&** fish drags my RA along the bottom somehow managing to snap off my line release (in front of the handle). The frying pan shall teach you lesson my fishy foe! :t

Time to head back. I stay about 30m from the shore out of courtesy to the line fisho family camped out along the rocks. In one rocky bowl I spot a couple of goatfish snooping along. Hanging back a little is a Bastard trumpeter. My next victim! I drop down to 6m and aim just behind the head. The fish, perhaps unaware of my requirement for it to stay still while I shoot, moves off. How rude! Following I manage to spook it and it begins to accelerate towards the open ocean. I manage to cut it off by srpinting about 15m and herd it towards a cave where it succumbs to a carefully placed shot in the middle. Its all I could see with its head in the cave, so it would have to do. I grab the fish and push my hand into its gills. Finally I get to go back to the surface for a breath! About time too..

On the way back I check out the spot where I speared the Bream about an hour before. Its mate is back! I dive and it moves under the ledge. I drift down to about 7m and wait until I can make it out in the shadows. Its sitting about 3m away and doesn't move. Since Bream are usually pretty spooky I wait for an explosion of piscine power but nothing happens. A spear just above the pectoral fin ends any chance of escape. As I surface I notice that the eye on the side facing me look a bit white. I touch it and the eye falls out. Eeewww. :yack

About 20m from where we get in and out I get run over (and into) by a school of Salmon that has some absolute thumpers! Well into the 6-8kg range.

After I get out the line fisho near where our car was parked comes over and admires the fish. Apparently its the closest he has gotten to a fish all day. I give him two lures I found and explain what the underwater topography looks like in the area and where the Bream and Salmon are hanging around. He responds by telling me off a few good spots for spearing around Sydney. Nice guy, Im sure he wont be throwing rocks and sinker at spearos. Unlike some others who frequent the area..

Finally its back home for a shower and photographs of my catch. Its a new record for Bream for me! 41cm and roughly 2kg. Its also the most fish Ive ever shot in one day but with friends coming over for dinner and my love of Sashimi all of it will get eaten inside the week. In fact the Trumpeter is roasting as I type!

All in all a good day. Its really something to see a school of several hundred 60-90cm fish walling around you. Now all we can hope for is for the Kingfish to show up!:)
 
btw Bass Point is near Wollongong, Australia. If you are unfamiliar with the fish described have a look at www.fishbase.org and type the name into its search engine. Great site for figuring out what fish people are talking about.

Pics of my catch will come as soon as I finish off the roll in my camera and have them developed.

:wave
 
Ummm...

Not sure if you're aware mate but spearing Groper in NSW isn't just illegal, it's plain stupid.

There's two main things in NSW that give spearos a bad name - *** killing sting rays and leaving them on the beach and *** killing groper. Apologies for the language, but after living at bass Point for 10 years I kinda get upset when someone comes along and shoots a protected species... It takes no skill whatsoever to kill a groper, the damn things come straight at the divers, hence the need for total bans on the spearing of them. If there's any part of this you don't understand, I'd be happy to go over it with you, but breaking the law by shooting protected species is stupid, idiotic, unskillful and bound to bring about a bad name for spearos everywhere.

Loopy
 
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Unfortunately the slang I used must have confused you. And "administrative kill" is exactly that. A kill on paper only. Its an airforce term for getting into a good shooting position and saying "Bang, youre dead". Nothing is hurt other than perhaps the gropers pride...:t
 
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Sincerest apologies to all - I wrote that after a long day, and was totally thoughtless and full of mis-information.

The reason I got so fierd up, and I'm sure Shadowkiller can back me up here, is that I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people spearing groper in our waters, and when confronted, they either claim ignorance, or just get in their car and drive away before the fisheries inspectors come out. The whole reason there's a ban on spearing groper is firstly because they're very terrotorial, so once you kill them they're gone, and secondly because they're very easy to shoot.

But once again my sincerest apologies - next time I'll be sure to check with the original poster before opening flaming them in a public forum.

Originally posted by Shadowkiller

Nothing is hurt other than perhaps the gropers pride...:t
And mine...

Sorry again all.
 
I have to agree with Loopy, the amount of protected species shot by young and/or ignorant spearos around here is pretty bad.

Stingrays are shot and left to rot, Blind Sharks (40-60cm) nesting in caves have been killed by the dozen and dumped into a little rock pool designed for kids (5 inches deep), and Ive seen numerous Blue Groper with holes and tear marks from spears.

I prefer to play with the Stingrays, tease the Blind Sharks (yes they do bite:eek: ) and stalk the Blue Groper with benign intent. Pretty much any fish is fair game for a practice run for me, but getting into position and pretending to take a shot is as far as it goes. I like to hone my skills as much as possible and stalking Gropers is great fun. The ones in excess of a meter long and 40-50kg in weight make great playmates! And I would never hurt one intentionally..

Nice to see someone who is as passionate about protecting our threatened species as I am. I guess my reaction was more out of hurt that someone would think that of me than anything else.

Hey Loopy, have you checked out www.spearfishing.com.au and the forum there? Theres a couple of people from the 'gong area. You'd make a welcome addition!:)
 
After a leisurely swim out to the tip of the gravel loader with a couple of dives to the bottom, I looked around and there was no shadowkiller to be seen. So I hung around for a bit, and knotted my floatline so that I could later measure the depth. Eventually shadowkiller turned up so we could do some hunting together.

It's funny, no matter how often we dive together we somehow seem to get separated, and only see each other at the car after the dive... I used to wonder about this, but now I know why.

When we got to the other side of the bay, SK had already shot a monster bream, the sort of fish that I would gladly tow home and feed half the neighbors with, but he wasn't finished. I'd just managed to ditch him and snuck up on the resident school of salmon, and missed my shot when who should paddle up? Shadowkiller himself!

I usually manage to calm the fish with an old Australian bush trick of thinking loudly at them "Here fishy fishy fishy, Dr. Ben is about to administer a little injection just behind the eyes, it won't hurt a bit, all your troubles will be over very soon", but this time it didn't work. They were all really really skittish for some reason. It might have been something to do with the 130 cm Rob Allen being blasted around by some trigger happy thug spearo who shall remain nameless...
I gave up and headed back to the car, only stopping to blow a couple of bursts of air at a groper, surprised to find himself face to face with a spear tip. I call it "Pretend kill", "Frighten the bejeezus out of a protected species", or "see how good your self-control is by pointing a loaded gun at the kill zone of a meaty 90 cm fish" . I guess that groper must have had his daily dose of looking down the wrong end of a speargun that day, what with SK's account of things.

And just to add insult to injury, that same Rob Allen managed to get another prize bream, one that would feed the neighbors on the other side of my house, as well as a really really nice trumpeter, the sort of fish you only see half a dozen of a year.

Nasty fish, all of them. I wouldn't shoot any of them, given half the chance. Erm.... yeah.

Lucky bugger.
 
advanced hunting techniques...

"I usually manage to calm the fish with an old Australian bush trick of thinking loudly at them "Here fishy fishy fishy, Dr. Ben is about to administer a little injection just behind the eyes, it won't hurt a bit, all your troubles will be over very soon"

rofl rofl rofl Brilliant! I reckon that's worth a try...
 
Hes got the same approach with women..
"It wont hurt a bit..."
rofl rofl rofl

Sorry ben, had to be done..:blackeye :crutch
 
Oh and in case anyones wondering Ben (nebbian) didnt get a fish that day... Usually its the other way 'round so he's a touch miffed.

:D :D :p
 
Originally posted by Shadowkiller
Hes got the same approach with women..
"It wont hurt a bit..."
rofl rofl rofl

Sorry ben, had to be done..:blackeye :crutch
you forgot to mention the part about the little injection rofl rofl rofl
 
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