Toga(s) party!

Well early summer is finally here and the kayak bug was itching away at me and my brother, so we decided to head out for an arvo flick on our Freak Assassins. We were loaded up and on the road by 2 pm to get to one of our favourite spots and were stoked to have the opportunity to fish, particularly as the bass season was less than a week away. We also thought we might see if some Saratoga would be hungry as the weather was really starting to warm up. We got to our spot at around 3 pm and we were on the water 10 minutes later. After dusting off some cob webs off our yak and reel, we flicked our first cast from the back and needless to say there were pro casts straight into some trees and good laughs for about 40 minutes whilst we paddled up the river.

 

I was at one of my favourite snags when I caught my first ever wild bass. It was 46 cm. Not a bad start but today something else decided to take my z man 3inch minnowz in houdini rigged on a tt lures sws hook. The cast was good, I let it sink a little and then started my retrieve of a slow roll with some twitches and hops, a couple of pauses and then WHACK I was on. It had me straight around part of a snag and panic set in. With one hand paddling, only stopping to keep tension on my line, I got into the snag and managed to get a nice toga out of the sticks. It was gonna be a good afternoon.

After some photos and go pro footage of one of my top 5 favourite fish we continued up river. The water levels were about a foot below where they usually are, due to the long period without rain, so our snags weren’t as good as they are when there’s a bit more water around. Also due to the large floods we have been getting in the south east region lately, lots of our timber was pushed right against the bank but we continued casting away when I heard that beautiful sound of drag being ripped off a spool.  I looked around and Chris was on big time. We thought it was a huge bass for sure until a monster saratoga came erupting out of the water beside us. After he landed the fish, we measured it for its length – 65cm. Not the biggest toga we have seen out there, but the thickness of this fish was incredible – 4 inches across the shoulders. It was a very welcome catch, again on the z man minnowz and space guppy on the sws hook. After some great photos and the release, it was about that time to start the paddle back to our launch site as two very happy kayakers.