The Eastern koels have arrived for 2022 and random fishing notes
Every year I note the changing of the seasons via the arrival of the migratory cuckoos. Typically I see or usually hear the channel-billed cuckoos in late September or early October, and the Eastern (aka Pacific) koels follow a few days later.
Last Sunday morning, 25th September 2022 Amanda told me she was sure she had heard a koel calling at first light. I was sound asleep and it had stopped calling by the time I stirred. We didn't hear it call again that day.
The next afternoon I was exercising our dogs, when a male Eastern koel began to call from a tree, just a few hundred metres from Casa da Ayre. I didn't see him, but the call is truly unmistakable.
Spring is definitely here. For once, the koels have arrived BEFORE the Channel-billed cuckoos.
An interesting anecdote is the fishing in Lake Macquarie - my usually extremely reliable shallow-water whiting & bream spot let me down badly last Sunday night.
It was the night before the new moon and for the first time in my memory there were no yabbie burrows visible at all. "Squirt" worms were widespread, plenty of fiddler crabs on the waters edge, and small poddy mullet, and stacks of small "greasy back" prawns were foraging in the shallows. I stocked up on prawns for bait, though I was very tempted to eat nearly half of them. They are a good size already and next month's new moon is likely to see a bountiful prawn "run" in Swansea channel. Whilst hunting yabbies, I caught a few prawns and cast them back out whilst chasing more bait. Usually this will quickly result in a fat sand whiting or yellow-finned bream. Unfortunately the action was extremely pedestrian. I eventually landed a large eel and a legal sized bream, but released both of them unharmed. They were great sport on my light tackle, but not the plump fish I was seeking to invite home for dinner. There were plenty of small-to-medium poddy mullet about, and I saw around a dozen, very much undersized whiting right up in the shallows. I didn't see any legal sized fish.
It was interesting to note that the water in the shallows was still quite cool, (~14 - 15 degrees) and I didn't see a single yabby burrow in the entire area - which is a first. The obvious thing that springs to mind is we are in a very prolonged period of wet weather.
My hypothesis is the salinity level is much lower than normal and the yabbies can't tolerate the changed salinity for such a prolonged period. It has been over a year of consistently very wet weather. I'll check my other yabby beds in Swansea channel and see if the yabbies are still present nearer the ocean. Normally I'd have quickly pumped a good number of yabbies, and caught three or four very solid whiting whilst collecting the bait. I suspect that the total lack of yabbies resulted in no whiting being caught. Hopefully things will have improved on my next trip.
