queensland Sunshine Reef

[daveylad]

made an overnighter with Dhess to the Sunshine Reef from Mooloolabah on Wednesday night, the forecasts looked great but there was still some slop around and wind to about 15knots at times. Didnt do too well at the night session but found a couple of interesting areas for the future. Dhess landed a couple of small sharks then released them back. Next morning after a good sleep we headed off about 4am for the sunshine reef which is only about 10 mins out of noosa. We sounded around for half an hour and found some interesting spots, the area covered by reefs and showing good signs of bait and fish. The reef is a massive area. As soos as we started we got some great bites and soon pulled in some nice fish Snapper, Grassy sweetlip which were all a good size, Then I got hit with a good spotted Mac and landed it. Dhess was saying he hadnt caught one yet then shortly fater he got hit and landed his first spotted mack. There was a great variety of fish there we also caught a parrott, Snapper,and Cod. In the day we had a number of what looked like remoras hanging about the boat. This will be a great area for the future close to land and some great bait balls and structure all over the reef. Have to do a bar course though its a good 18 nautical miles from Mooloolaba and only 4 from Noosa bar.

[daveylad]

shark

[tugger]

nice one dave it should be close to home for you did you take any pictures

mark

[daveylad]

last try

[daveylad]

dhess

[daveylad]

mack

[daveylad]

How did you go at the Rock mark, was the Bar okay?

[tugger]

what bar it was flat bloody top day plenty of fish too and baden is doing a report, that mack looks like a school mackerel did the spots go all over him or were they large spots in the tail half end both eat alright and school macks are more likely here this time of year

[daveylad]

Spots were all over, I'm looking into a bar course went 18 N/miles yesterday and it would have only been 4 thriough the Noosa Bar people leaving it though were telling the VCG that it was very shallow in the passage. We ended up with about a dozen good fish. Those Grassies taste really good I'd put them slightly higher than a snapper for taste. Parrott fish was nice too.

[yoyo]

good job dave, looks like a good session...

[neal82]

nice session mate.

how are the conditions up mooloolaba way? trying to talk the skipper into maybe heading up sunday to fish murphys, curramundi and the gneerings.

Neal

[daveylad]

neal82 wrote:

nice session mate.

how are the conditions up mooloolaba way? trying to talk the skipper into maybe heading up sunday to fish murphys, curramundi and the gneerings.

Neal

I've been to the Mooloolaba areas recently and not fished as well as the Noosa areas I've found the reefs better there, caloundra is an artea I want to go too and check out the 12 mile and some of the others like rapers shoal. The water has been great when we came back form Noosa the other day i was sitting on 40 to 45 klm per hour without a bump hope we get some more of those conditions soon.

[neal82]

thanks

sounds pretty calm up there. i'll see what he says when i talk to him tomorrow

[dhess]

Was a fun trip. I can't believe how smooth Dave's Whittley rides. In any plate boat I would not have been able to sit down as my bad back would be getiing rattled to pieces. It was like riding on a magic carpet. It was also super comfortable to camp out in compared to my spartan tub.

Got off to a bit of an interesting start for me on Wednesday afternoon as despite my usual life saving Kwells I felt like absolute crap. We probbly started about 15km NE of Noosa and out wider there were some pretty big sets of swell rolling through :X. Like Dave said all we could find were sharks and the biggest grinners I have ever seen. They were all over 50cm long. I reckon the area holds great promise and will definitely be going back in my boat to sound it out in nicer conditions.

Came in close for the night to anchor up and have a good sleep. It was very nice and sheltered in Lagua Bay. We woke up to very flat seas and had a very smooth ride out to the reef.

The next day day the fishing started off pretty hot on dawn but the bite died off by about 8:30 with only a fish an hour coming on board after that.

I was very happy to land my first mackerel. Not 100% sure if it was a spotty but it did have spots nearly all over it and had very white flesh. I remember reading that doggies are meant to be meatier and a bit darker fleshed. Whatever it was it made for nice fish and chip fish and decent sashimi. Not quite up to the standard of wahoo though.

All morning we were plagued by something biting our rigs to pieces near hooks, near swivels even at leader connections knots. We saw a school of fish around 30cm fish feeding on the surface so we burlied them up and tried to catch a few to see what they were. I got bitten off at the leader knot straight away but Dave managed to land one. Sea toads. Never encountered these before, but all I can say is they are a pain.

Big thanks again to Dave for a top trip. :ta:

[ellicat]

That's a school mackerel. Spotties have smaller, darker, and more tightly grouped spots that do not spread all over the body. Schoolies have more of a blur or finger-print type spot. If you lift the dorsal fin the schoolies have a white-out section towards the front of the fin. Spotties' dorsals are consistently coloured.

For such a close in reef it seems to have fished pretty well. Was there much traffic in the area ?

[dhess]

Thanks for the ID Brian.

Oh well yet to land a spotty but a school mackerel is a first for me as well so equally happy.

Yeah Sunshine reef fished really well. I reckon future trips will be even more productive. I think the key like any other close in shallow reef is to fish dawn dusk as daytime seems to really shutdown.

There were about eight boats around but it is such a vast area that know one really got close to us.

It was nice to be able to have a drift that went for 30mins or so over decent ground. Most of the shallow reefs I fish I usually have to redrift every few minutes.

[tugger]

spotties macks have small well defined spots all over them and schoolies have large spots in the later half of the fish that fade slightly upon death as well as spotties have a very sharp pointed upper and lower jaw and schoolies have a more blunt lower jaw i hope this helps with identification in the future as they have diferent size limits

spotty 60cm min length 5 bag limit

schoolie 50cm min length

[webbfunk]

Good to see you're getting the Whittley out and amongst it Dave.