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Saltwater Assassin – Trip Report – Leigh 13 July 2014

By Lee on July 13, 2014 • ( 0 )

Finally the wild weather has ceased! With the weather looking good, myself and some keen kayak fishos (good friends of mine) decided to try our luck up at Leigh. Eagerly keen we arrived in Leigh at 6am, by 6:30 we were launching the kayaks from Leigh wharf in the dark. If you haven’t launched in this area before, I highly recommend launching with a buddy as this area is prone to big ocean swells and can be a bit daunting if wind opposes tide. Kayaking out of the Leigh entrance was very interesting today with big 2.5- 3 metre swells pumping, not a good day for the faint hearted.

We headed out to the deep first as all the reefs along the coast at this point of the day were unfishable because of the breaking waves. We tried fishing all depths 20-50 metres with not much joy. I managed to bag one Snapper at the 50 metre mark. (caught on a Orange Catch Beta Bug).

With the swell starting to die down we decided to head over and try our luck in the shallows. With the waves crashing into the coast, it was a great chance to try some wash fishing. This kind of fishing in a kayak is a real adrenaline rush, I would recommend to keep your paddle handy, with waves pumping in you may have to move in a hurry.

Finally after a slow start to the day I had a solid hook up, casting soft baits into the wash in 9 metres of water. Unfortunately I couldn’t stop this fish, within seconds it had busted me off into the reef. Another cast and I was into another decent fish.

The face says it all.

Another fish for the future.

With the fishing proving to be very slow we decided to explore a cave in the Leigh entrance, let’s just say it probably wasn’t the greatest idea with swells still pumping.

I think the two friends that I convinced to paddle into the cave with me, may think twice before following me into a cave again. Major carnage! With some nasty swell surges coming through the cave, I waited for the right moment and took the chance, luckily I just made it through… my friends were not so lucky, they both got picked up by swells and got rolled out. A bit of an ordeal at the time but luckily nobody was hurt. We had a good laugh about it on the paddle back. Sorry guys!