queensland A Few Cobes

[Smithy]

16 August

Peter organised Bill and Ron to come out with him. We did no good on the soft plastics and octopus jigs first up other than for undersize brown maori cods, footballer cods and scorpion cods but just as we were about to leave the live yakka on the Shimano Baitunner took off at a million miles an hour. It ended up being a pretty good brown maori sea perch. I jigged up a good tanks of live baits so it was off to play with the AJs and yellowtail kingfish. They were on straight away but we pulled hooks and got busted up all over the place. Initially we only had one in the box for about 6 hookups. It was slow going on the turn of the tide again but things picked up with a bit of run. Peter got busted up a few more times on the 30lb gear on the Baitrunner he was running but we ended up with a couple more in the box and then the threat of the northerly building saw us heading in closer to home. We tried a couple of spots on the way home coming up trumps on the cobia. We also suffered a few bustoffs here with Peter on a shocking run until he came through with the biggest fish of the day.

15 August

Graeme and his partner Leighanne were back out with me again. The snapper are either very quiet this year or very late but whilst throwing the soft plastics around I am jigging up enough live bait to keep us going for the day. We headed to the cobia spot and after a few tries we hooked up to this nice fish on the 10kg overhead. It popped up with a friend in attendance but we were not prepared with the second live bait to go for the double hookup.

Graeme used his light tackle tuna experience from New Zealand to great effect and we landed the fish on about its third trip to the boat. It was a pretty good one about 15kg.

We gave it a few more drifts then headed out to play with the amberjacks. They were on the job hitting live baits and jigged soft plastics. Here is the result of a double hookup.

We kept a few and let some go and went for a troll to try something different. We only got one of the jelly bean size mack tuna similar to what Graeme had spun up earlier on the slugs but other boats trolling near us got into the big kingfish toward dusk. Unfortunately once they switched on we were allready heading for home.

11 August

Today I had Joe, Mike and Troy aboard. We started of soft plasticing for snapper with Mike landing one legal one and the boys letting a few undersize ones go. I jigged bait and caught the most for a couple of weeks. Getting livies had been pretty hard lately. We tried a few different spots and with the sun now high in the sky it was time to try something else. We went and had a go for cobia but they weren’t on the job. We went to a pretty productive amberjack and yellowtail kingfish spot and thought is was going to be on for young and old with a tank full of livebait and good shows everywhere. The first drop produced a kingy about 8kg for Troy then Mike got an AJ and things were looking up. About then the tide went slack and so did the fish for an hour or so. Once it started to run again Joe ended up with an AJ then everyone caught a second one with the fishing getting hotter and hotter at the tide started to run. I gave the boys the option of staying and catching releasing more AJs or kingys for the rest of the day or to chase a few reef fish. The first spot we found the current racing at 1.5knots so we ran another 4 miles or so to try and get out of it. This we did and ended up getting four or so pigfish, letting a few go, catching a couple of pearl perch and letting a few go and losing something that was pretty good just under the boat to a tangle. All in all we put together a good feed for the day.

10 August

Today I had Sydney visitor George who used to hold the boat grass sweetlip record and Marcus from NZ out. We started off on plastics and the first couple of spots didn’t fire. I went back to one of this years more reliable spots and had a double hookup of mid 50cm fish straight away. It got quiet from there and George picked up a second fish a while later on a different spot. I now had enough livies to think about chasing some Cobia. The first two spots we drifted had good enough shows of fish but no Cobia. We were just at the end of our drift on our first drift on a new spot when the Baitrunner 6500 started to let go line. This was it and we were on. George was first on it but with the fight lasting 1:10 at least, we all had a go on the outfit with 10kg low stretch Platypus line. It was a beast of a Cobia in the 25-30kg bracket.

[rumrunner]

awsome read smithy!

you da man!!!

Rummy.

[fishing_hardcore]

nice pics mate

great size cobia there, what are they like for eating?

cheers

[Smithy]

Cobia eat really well. Bleed them and only eat the white meat. Trim out the blood line like all pelagic fish.

[yoyo]

Off the chain fishing acvtion !

cant wait to get out with you on sunday smithy ! forecast looks good !

[thousandyards]

smithy....i'm a bit ignorant here - i'm assuming you run a charter?? you got a website or something for it?? would love to know where you operate out of....

outstanding report mate - that cobe is an absolute horse!!

[faulked]

http://www.sqcs.com.au/

[Smithy]

August 29th, 2009

I had regulars Luke and Simon out today on a full day. We started off getting live bait then going to one of my amberjack and kingfish spots. We had a few drifts here with the current racing but Simon got an ok AJ and dusted up as well. Luke was slow to start but got one as well. It was looking like that was all we were going to get there so we headed to a pearl perch spot of mine. They were on the job and we got seven or so there with two legal fish a drift coming aboard. I talked the boys into moving so we had a couple of pearl perch up our sleeve if we got onto some later on. We hunted all over the place for the next few hours stopping and dropping but doing no good. I ran over a random bait school that was very dense and whitelining my sounder such that is nearly looked like bottom structure it was that tightly packed. Simon was hit on the drop and we didn't know what we were onto. The calls ranged from cobia, big tuna, AJ etc. but eventually we got colour on a 8'-9' bronze whaler. We got him to the boat a few times before he wore throught the leader on his skin. The bait dispersed after that so it must have been him that was balling it up. I anchored on one of my spots and Luke came up tight straight away on a nice little cobia. He was on fire for the arvo pulling a few more pearl perch, a couple of trag jew and a squire. Simon had not much luck by comparison but maybe it was a heavy leader V light leader thing. Certainly a good comparison. We got a big heap of fish and boys drove home with tails hanging out of the top of the esky they bought along.

August 28th, 2009

Dennis organised a full day with me to learn a few things about what I do and how I interpret my sounder etc. but couldn't get a crew so I did a ring around and got regulars Jim and Dave organised. We started out soft plasticing which was very quiet and even the bait didn't jig up for me. We got desperate for live bait and tried another three spots and struggled to get much. We went to a spot of mine and had a couple of drifts and anchors and did no good so it was time to try another spot for live bait. We ended up with a good tank of live baits and watched young Jeff Oates the President of the Sunshine Coast Gamefish Club fighting a 80kg black marlin on the inshore grounds. He ended up getting a second black marlin later in the day at and estimated 110kg to christen his new 4.5m boat. We went to an aj/kingy spot of mine and sure enough they were on. Dave got two, Dennis got one and then he went to an unweighted bait hoping for marlin and surprinsingly got a second kingy way up high in the water column. It was then up to Jim to finish off the bag limit which he did.

Being bagged out on kingys of a similar size to the one in the photo we decided to chase some cobia. It took a while but Jim finally hooked up to this one and a good one it was at around an estimated 18kg.

If you come out with me at the moment the whales are absolutely everywhere and much more playful as they head south rather then the straightlining they do when going north.

August 21st, 2009

Today I had Josh who made the booking along with Wazza and Johnno out to chase cobia. I really need live bait for them so you might as well start out soft plasticing on the bait grounds. Johnno ended up with a nice squire and got busted up twice by two really good fish. One I suspect was a good snapper and the other I am guessing was a good grass sweetlip. Like Thursday, the cobia didn't want to play until later. We missed a bite from one and then Johnno once again got taken into the reef. About then we ran out of live bait and the wind got up so we came in. Next time.

August 20th, 2009

David had his dad Doug along for a dusk snapper trip. They were quiet until right on dusk. Up in the shallows we got a 71cm squire and a 48cm squire. They went super hard in the shallow water.

August 20th, 2009

Damian organised this trip to chase cobia after bumping into me at the ramp quite a few times and after seeing me on the IFish TV show episode where we caught cobia. We started out soft plasticing while I jigged bait. We tried all my southern black kingfish spots and did no good other than losing bait so it was back off to Caloundra to load up again then off to another few spots. We tried drifting and anchoring with berley but nothing was working. I came back to the first spot and unbelievably they absolutely bit their heads off. We had double hookups galore with Damian losing his but the other boys had perfect records. Damian eventually got one and we finished with 5 out of 6 before we had to head in to pick up my afternoon charter. It was also a good day to look at the whales and they really wanted to look at us as well.

August 19th, 2009

Mike Tyson (no not the boxer) set up an afternoon trip with his mates Tommy and Ruff. We made livebait easily enough and it was straight out to the cobia spot. First drop and Ruff was on having never caught a decent fish before. It ended up being a black kingfish about 12kg. Mike hooked up shortly after landing his best fish ever, a cobia about 8kg. We missed a couple and then it went quiet. Time to chase snapper on plastics. The wind never abated, the swell was up and some current was running so our drift was a bit funny and the sea-anchor kept blowing itself inside out on the big swells so we never really put it together on the snapper on plastics front.

[wesfish]

smashing them smithy :woohoo: looks like a great time of year out there !!