March 2022 has been the wettest in living memory. 22 rain days in the month. Major flooding along most of the east coast.

Those who have braved the flood waters in the Hawkesbury River are catching some good sized Mullaway and further up towards Windsor and the Grose River they are reporting Rainbow Trout in big numbers.

Meanwhile Broken Bay and Pittwater are muddy waters, the colour of strong white tea with lots of debris and this continues out past 120 metres to seaward. We have spent most of the month with the boat in the berth and rescheduling charters to April because of the weather conditions and sea state.

On the days we have managed to get out we have been very successful catching quality fish. The FADS have not been productive in anyway because all the brown water. The local close reefs and drifts are also not producing much either.

We have had good results at Texas Reef in the blue water catching lots of Skip Jack Tuna and we lost a good Marlin there with a first time Game Fisher on the rod and reel.
Further out at the Canyons we caught and released five good size Blacks and Mahi Mahi in the 27.5C waters at 700 metres. Other boats have also caught fish at Bait Station and east of Browns Mountain.

We entered the Broken Bay Invitational 19 and 20 March. Typically for this annual event the weather was just rubbish. The RU4 Reel Game Fishing Team, Rick, Kate, Greg, Ronnie, Andrew and Louis plus me assemble at the berth at 0530 ready to go get some Marlin. Saturday was raining heavily and 3 metre plus seas. We got 8 miles to seaward making our way to Texas Reef when we took two big green waves over the top of the fly bridge of the Steber 38 and I decided to turn around and head back into Pittwater. With the following seas we were making a good 12 knots comfortably when the visibility went to zero in a big storm and I was now focused on the radar, chart plotter and AIS transceiver for safe navigation back to our berth. A 30 ft boat sank just off whale beach in these conditions in the afternoon trying to passage from Pittwater to Sydney Harbour. A pending world record Tuna 197kg was caught out the Canyons where were the day before fishing the exact same spot, by the crew on Fraid Knot a 20 foot Bar Crasher Trailer Boat.

Sunday morning had us at the berth enjoying breakfast preparing to go again when the early morning weather reported 3-4 metre seas out the front so we just stayed there and had a few beers. We won a nice gaff, a lure, a couple of Shimano caps, some Stubby holders, 12 beers, some hooks and swivels in the comp without even wetting a line. Thank you BBGFC committee these are terrific prizes and are now on RU4 Reel ready for our next adventure.

Weather here in Sydney since then has been windy and raining every day so we have not been out. The forecast for the Friday 1st and 2nd April here is for 6 metre seas and hurricane force southerly winds. So the weather gods are not very pleased with us right now.