There's always somewhere
This story was submitted by experienced saltwater angler and Black Magic Brand Ambassador Leigh Holtsbaum, from Queensland, Australia.
Recent weather in south-east Queensland has restricted fishing options significantly, and I was going stir crazy sitting at home, so I decided to find what sheltered locations I could with deep water access.
On the Gold Coast that doesn’t leave many options and the only spot I could think of is the submerged sand pipe that sits 2m off the sand and run across the bottom of the Gold Coast Seaway at a depth of 14m. Fortunately this location is protected from strong southerly winds by the break wall and spit landmass.
When fishing this structure light tackle isn’t really an option, as the fish that call the pipe home know how to use it to their advantage and will quickly run under it and bust off in an instant. I decided to use [Black Magic’s] new Hyperglide® 13x Braid in 50lb for this occasion.
I’ve previously fished with the 20 and 30lb, and I was extremely pleased with the performance of the braid, but in this situation, I needed the extra strength to muscle the fish out from the structure.
Connecting [Black Magic] 80lb Tough Trace using a reverse Albright knot, I felt very confident with gear selection. On this occasion I was using live baits and went with the old faithful snelled double hook rig using 5/0 C Point® hooks with a 1 meter length of 80lb Tough Trace, a 15kg swivel and 2oz ball sinker.
Drifting the pipe with live yellowtail pike I soon found some action and boated a nice kingfish that tried every trick in the book to get back under the pipe and bust me off before I managed to wrestle him out.
Unfortunately, on the next hook up, I wasn’t so lucky and a considerably larger model showed me up and made it back home. Soon after I made quick work of some small giant trevally that didn’t give me any trouble even around the pipe structure and called it a morning.
I was extremely happy with the performance of the 50lb Hyperglide® 13x Braid and can’t wait to get offshore to give it a go throwing some topwater lures for spanish mackerel and larger GT’s to see what it is truly capable of.
