queensland Rainbow Beach Wide 29/12

[dhess]

Towed a friends boat up to Rainbow Beach on Monday morning for an overnight fish. After a leisurely tow and picking up some supplies for an overnighter we finally hit the water at 9am.

After an easy bar crossing we worked our way north east to hit a few marks off Fraser Island. Conditions were great and whilst cruising saw heaps of flying fish and tuna bust ups. I was itching to put out a few lures but the others would have none of it.

Fishing ended up being slow most of the day, on the bright side the current wasn't too bad. The wind was slowly building to about 15 knots but was still fishable and comfortable due to the swell only being small.

Slowly we put together a bag of 5 trag jew, 6 tuskfish and 4 moses perch. The sun was slowly beginning to set so we figured we would head in close to double island point to a previously productive spot to the fish the dusk bite and settle for the night. We anchored up on our mark off DI and almost immediately things heated up. 6 pearlies came on board followed by a long finned snapper and a 10kg ish cobia. Soon after I got busted up on my 100lb bottom basher.

I quickly rerigged and had a drop with a floater and instantly hooked up. Soon after up came an 11kg cod. I did my best to release it but it had suffered too much baro trauma. We kept for a feed and it ended up being nice. I still feel a bit bad about it not surviving.

Next drop I get smashed again. After a very intense fight that went for about 10min with a locked up drag on 50lb braid i got busted off. Next up a mate hooked a nice snapper and after a short fight got sharked 15-20m from the boat. The head weighed in at 2.3kg. Soon after I got smashed and had another very intense tussle that went for about 15min before busting off. I am convinced on both occasions I had hooked sharks as they were in the area, and had I hooked anything else I would have been sharked in no time. Whatever they were my back is still hurting.

It was close to night fall and the wind was picking up so we made a late decision to make a dash for the bar. After a wet ride through what was becoming uncomfortable chop we crossed the bar on dark. Bit hairy but the GPS saved the day following our previous track near the top of the incoming tide.

We anchored up inside Inskip Pt. for the night and went to sleep with a few electrical storms on the horizon. We were awoken two hours later by chop and wind howling at 30knots. The storm had hit. Thank christ we decided to come back in. I can't begin to imagine what it would have been like to spend the night in open water in that.

It was a shame the weather turned to crap on tuesday and we couldn't get out again. All up a very enjoyable but somewhat humbling trip.

Unfortuabtely no pics. I took the digital SLR but when the action was hot I didn't want to miss any of it taking pics.

[Angus]

DOm good to see your getting out.

Humbling is a good thing sometimes when fishing, but it sounds like you took the right precautions and it paid off so id you guys did fine!

Sounds like some nice fish. Shame about the cod, but we cant thats fishing hey. Always going to be some casualties. At least it was somthing worth eating!

Cheers.

Angus

[dhess]

Thanks for the reply Angus.

If anyone knows I am after a bit of input on the best way to fight big sharks. My usual approach of going to full drag almost straight away is not working. It is the only way to go with AJ's and bigger kingies otherwise you get reefed. It doesn't seemed to work to great with sharks as I have never got one boat side bigger than about 1.7m. Most times my leader is failing at the snelled top hook.

The rig I usually use is a floater rig with two gamakatsu octops circle hooks (6/0 or 7/0) snelled on anywhere from 60lb to 100lb leader. I am wondering if the snell is a fairly weak knot by nature or if the problem is caused by abrasion from a prolonged fight.

The circles are obviously finding the corner of the mouth as I am yet to be bitten off.

[tacklebox]

Sounds like an action packed trip. Thanks for the report

[jeff f]

you are probably being tail whipped

[dhess]

jeff f wrote:

you are probably being tail whipped

Thats what I thought at first but when I looked at the length of the leader and where the break is it rules it out.

[noname]

only 1 way to fight big sharks - as dirty as you can re; drum floats.

[wesfish]

if you are doing a snell rig with wire then its a mistake as the wire will twist and snap right at the top of your second hook, if its with mono this could be the same thing happening , (yes i think a weak spot is created with a snell ), i would be crimping your mono or wire to stop this from happening...

[dhess]

All my rigs were mono. Is there a way of creating a two hook rig in mono using crimps instead of snelling?