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Mojo's still got it

Terry H

By Terry H
in Saltwater

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Terry H Newbie

Terry H

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With prime weather available for boaties and sailless kayaks alike, I decided to brush the dirt/dust off ol' Mojo, loaded it up on the car n took the drive up to caloundra, with the aim of bagging some Tuna.

Last night I'd given a few people a holla, and after some minor arm twisting, Keen As Fisho unloaded the boat, and threw on his kayak and met me up at Kings Beach boat ramp ready to go.

We set out off towards the blinker, however before we got there we started to notice some longtails leaping all over the place. I quickly threw on the slugs, and KAF the damiki vault, and we tried to find a couple of tuna that would pop up long enough to get a cast at them.

Before too long KAF hooked up on his spin stick - 15lbs? I think it was. That didn't last too long though, and before you can say "Yep I'm on!" the hooks were straightened. There's one for the lesson books: Given half a chance, metre long tuna will destroy your gear.

We pedalled around a fair bit trying to find a tuna or two that would stay up long enough to get to them, but it was nothing more than the odd leap or bust here and there. These were big fish, looking about the metre mark and solid as a brick s***house.

Without getting a further touch, we started heading out towards the blinker, which turns out there were a few guys hanging around there, and we had a couple of drifts for nothing before turning back towards Brays where there were some working birds.

Seeing small groups of 1-5 longtails smash on the surface once every 30 seconds proved challenging to chase down, especially in the kayaks, however that didn't stop us from persisting for a couple of hours. After deciding the slugs were working, I switched over to a plastic, with the aim of getting my first tuna on plastics. Once we again caught up with some tuna that were hanging around long enough to get a cast in, I fired off the plastic right next to one, started retrieving, and BANG! a reasonable surface strike right behind the plastic. Continuing with the retrieve, swoosh! a huge swirl right behind the plastic, clearly a reasonable fish!

Before you know it, as the plastic starts to come between KAF and myself, the water errupts, rod buckles over and my 4000 Fireblood starts crying out for mercy.

Well, with drags screaming for god knows how long,i held on for dear life, and battled this fish for quite a long time.

After about 20 minutes there was a solid stalemate. On my 12-20lbs stick loaded with 20lbs, this fish was feeling to be on the heavy side when down deep, and difficult to lift up. Then there'd be another gutsy run. After 30-45 minutes, I finally got the fish yakside, secured the gaff and watched the blood pour out. Meanwhile, I think it was about this time KAF started pedalling like mad to get away from my, rather LONG trail of tuna blood, leading directly to my kayak. Not to worry, I kept the feet dangling in the water.

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If you take a close look in the photo above, you can see the blood trail going off behind me.

What came up was a nice PB Longtail, which as we discovered back at the ramp, went 101cm and 8.5kg

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At this stage, inside my mirage well, was no seawater, but rather just solid red blood... Perfect. :woohoo:

Proof in the pudding: When others are trying to "match the hatch" and throw on 5cm slugs, Throwing on a 5" softplastic in a bright fluro pink, works a charm. They love the pinkies! (QFM Fishing Reports also mentioned they weren't taking slugs at Noosa, and only took the pink plastics)

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Well, my wrists felt like they needed replacing, but we started pedalling back to where I actually hooked up... which, after all the towing from the tuna, was a good 2 kilometres away!!

Once we caught up to the tuna again, I fired off another cast, and BANG ZZZZZZZZZZ on straight away! Yeehaa these plastics are great fun!

Unfortunately for me though, I'd decided to switch rods to the significantly heavier 30lbs stick so that I had some extra chance of dictating a few terms to the fish, and after 5 minutes of fighting the fish the hook pulled :(

Not to worry, full of confidence I went up to the school again, fired off a cast and before you can say "hows the tuna going KAF?" I was on again, gladly listening to the Stella 5000s drag run. But again, after I turned the fishes head the hooks pulled. This happened also the very next cast, much to the dismay of poor KAF who by now was just itching to get a hookup.

By this stage we were getting fairly tired, and struggled to get to the fish while they were active. In hindsight, a trolled lure would probably have been ideal, but I was too determined to have more fun on the plastics. We headed over to Brays in search of some GTs or other finfish funnery. What pursed was a good 15 minutes of hauling in dart after dart after big eye, all in the whitewash, however I could only must up the one 45cm GT. In search of some more drag screamers, I headed back out to the Tuna which were now closing in on Brays, and tried on some slugs again for extra distance. Finding they still weren't touching the slugs I fired out the plastics and immediately had a dozen more hits, swirls swips and touch ups but no other hookups.

With this, we both turned back to the boat ramp to answer the 1001 questions of "Big fish maaaaate, where did you get that?" "In that kayak?" yadda yada.

Only the one good fish, but certainly worth it

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Keen-as-fisho Newbie

Keen-as-fisho

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Awesome day offshore, despite the lack of fish on my part :whistle: Note to self, upgrade all trebles :evil: As Terry said I dropped my one and only Tuna hook up on the Damiki Vault, it was a blistering 30 second fight.

Terrys got a strange idea for a shark sheild on his yak :whistle:

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The fish took so many fast runs I started to wounder if he was going to land the beast.

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Terry H Newbie

Terry H

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Lol, coulda told me about that blood KAF.

Instead I found out about it 20 minutes later on our way back to the Tuna, when I put my hand down into the handle there to rest.

Hmm ... more blood.

Not sure if there was a part of the yak (or me) that didn't get covered in the stuff

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Terry H Newbie

Terry H

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Nice longy action guys.BIIIIG paddle from caloundra to the blinker,you guys must be super fit or extremely sore today! Snapbacks rule. Ben

Not really mate, the blinker is only 3 km away from shore. We have easily done over 25 kilometers in a morning chasing tuna before. Kayaks aren't too hard to move around, and even easier with the pedals

Cheers guys, just hope the weather settles down enough to get the ai out there and troll some up

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benobfo Newbie

benobfo

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Thats a good fish Terry, prettty amazed someone could get one from a yak still waiting for one from a boat, good story to, your poor old fishing companion gettting a donut sounds like he became well schooled after this effort but hey someone has to take the pics right!

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jeff f Newbie

jeff f

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Perhaps we have our wires crossed. Bout 15k's from brays(off caloundra) to the blinker(off mooloolaba) by my reckoning. Doesn't matter anyway. Top fish from a yak. Ben

different blinker blooey, the one terry means is only 1 km at most from brays rocks

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Terry H Newbie

Terry H

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Perhaps we have our wires crossed. Bout 15k's from brays(off caloundra) to the blinker(off mooloolaba) by my reckoning. Doesn't matter anyway. Top fish from a yak. Ben

different blinker blooey, the one terry means is only 1 km at most from brays rocks

Is that the outer gneerings one? I have been out there, and even further in the kayaks, but launching from mooloolabah for that

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Blooey Newbie

Blooey

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Perhaps we have our wires crossed. Bout 15k's from brays(off caloundra) to the blinker(off mooloolaba) by my reckoning. Doesn't matter anyway. Top fish from a yak. Ben

different blinker blooey, the one terry means is only 1 km at most from brays rocks

Is that the outer gneerings one? I have been out there, and even further in the kayaks, but launching from mooloolabah for that

Yeah mate the one on the gneerings is the "Blinker" i was thinking of. Thought the one off brays was on a pole. Ben

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