Well, last night (Friday) I hit a beach in Doubtless Bay. Had a solid 15kn wind right in my face, with a bit of slop pushing up the beach and an almost dead low tide. The forecast was for NW winds, so I'd hoped it would be a bit flatter for some gurnard, but not to be. There was a lot of weed and loose sticks on the beach suggesting a decent swell had pushed through earlier in the week.

First cast hit the water at 6:03pm. While pre-baiting some extra traces my rod goes and a nice 1.4kg kahawai becomes fish pie. Second bait hit the water, I set my sinker and drag, walked back up to my truck and turned around to find it bucking again. I thought to myself, ugh, kahawai plague. Wrong! A beautiful 1.6kg snapper graced my bin. The next 4 casts all got hook ups and all were small kahawai, 3 of which self released in the wash and one became bait. Next bait produced a 30cm snapper. I was still only fishing one rod. I hadn't even had time to get the other one out. I looked at the time on my phone. It was only 6:31pm!!

Then it stopped. I only had the one grey mullet as bait. As dark encroached and the sun disappeared behind the hill, the wind got biting and extra clothes didn't do much to stop it. One more bite, no hook up and at 11:30pm I called it quits and headed home. That was possibly the most intense 30 mins of fishing I've seen for a long, long time.