The CCFR’s first ever trip to target Estuary Perch was to take place on the Hawkesbury River above Wiseman’s Ferry. The weather was looking good with a forecast top of 25 degrees and light winds. We all met at Kariong at the designated time and signed the outing register before heading off down Wiseman’s Ferry Road.

Once across the river courtesy of the ferry we pulled into the boat ramp and started launching the boats. Each boat took off to do their own thing and search out some EPs.

Ken, Matt, Wilbur and I headed up towards the Colo River and started fishing. Wilbur and I sounded up some fish on the edge of a huge rock face that led into deeper water. On with the flies and out with the fast sink lines to get us down the 60 feet as quick as possible.

We drifted and cast for quite some time in the quiet conditions and thought what a top spot. Great scenery and serenity, until…. A ski boat traveling at speed went past us and woke us up out of our day dream.

About 10 minutes later a boat came up to us to tell us that a race was about to start with 30 ski boats traveling a 15km course at speeds of over 100mph. Bugger… that doesn’t sound too conducive to fishing now does it. To make matters even worse there was a 4 knot speed limit on the river whilst the race was on and we were confined to one side of the river.

Big Bob dawdled his way up to us to share with us the good news that he had already landed 3 EPs down near the houseboats and was coming up to catch the fish we ere targeting… luckily for him he didn’t actually manage to do so.

We all decided to go and look at the mouth of the Colo as there had been reports of some good bass and EPs coming from there during the week. We did our 4knots for what seemed like forever and finally reached the Colo. Had a few casts up there for no result and decided to continue up the river, away from the ski race towards Dargle. I spotted a really nice looking eddie and stopped to suss it out on the sounder. It was 70 feet deep and had fish galore holding fairly deep. We had a few casts and actually got a couple of hits. Hamish was working the shoreline near the eddie and also got hit but no hookups.

Time was going fast and we had to get back to start the BBQ for lunch. Unfortunatley it was going to be slow due to the ski race and it’s aftermath as well as the chop from the wind that was starting to pick up.

When we finally arrived at the ramp at 13:30 most of the others had departed and left Chris there. We loaded the boats back on the trailers and decided to give lunch a miss. We headed back onto the ferry and hit Wisemans Ferry Road for the trip home, a lot wiser about the place and determined to find somewhere that we could find out when the ski races were on, which I have since found so next time we shouldn’t get caught out.