queensland Just Bream Fishing at Straddie

[sicott]

Hi All!

My Dad and I headed over to Point Lookout on Tuesday morning for some much needed RnR (fishing) and arrived to find a picture perfect winter day and some beautiful water around the headland. Swell was huge and the wind was down so we went down to Frenchman's and collected worms and have a throw around the rocks. Lots of wrasse and nothing of note, so we packed up and headed to home early for an early start Wednesday.

Wednesday morning we decided we would chase jew as the conditions were as good as I've ever seen them for these fish. Loaded up big rods with big line and big hooks and walked along the front wall towards the gorge. Passed 3 guys spread out along the wall, one had already landed a jew and a big drummer and I watched the other pull in a small yellowtail kingfish. They were all using ganged Pilchards. I was bursting with excitement and moved on into North Gorge as there is a huge hole in the middle of it. Threw out a 6/0 hook with about 4 worms on it and not a touch for an hour. Perplexed, my dad arrived from a sleep in and threw in a 2/0 hook fishing for bream, and within a few minutes he was hooked up to a nice jew on his bream gear. It went 81cm and 12lb. I followed suit and grabbed my smaller rod with 15lb on it, threw on a 20lb leader and out went a 2/0 hook with a tiny piece of worm and as soon as my bait washed into the hole I was on. I knew it was a good fish as it took off out the gorge. Thankfully he didn't run around the headland and cut me off, and 20 minutes and 2 big runs later it was exhausted and we used the waves to wash up my pb jew at 20lb. I forgot to measure it in all the excitement.

Anyway, we repeated the same process each day and the best times were on the turn of the high tides in the morning (10am-ish) and right on dusk each day. Only used fresh sand worms and lighter gear than normal.

Total for the 2 days was 4 legal jew 81cm+ kept, 3 legal released, a few lost, and 4 bream 30cm+. All released jew were swum until strong and successfully released.

It is interesting to note that over the last 12 months my family and I have recreationally caught and released at least 50 undersize school jew from the Pt. Lookout Headland, and they seem to be getting consistently bigger. (I didn't meant to sound arrogant, just thought it was great to see consistently bigger fish around, and it should serve as further encouragement to adhere to legal sizes and bag limits.)

Sorry for the long report, but the fishing was incredible. These are my favourite fish and I'd love to help people experience the majesty of a jew off the rocks!

[mottly crew]

well done mate we were there couple of weeks ago but a bit rough for the rocks and it was raining good to see a report from the rocks

[Damien2Rad]

Nice!

I've been aching to get over there for a fish for a few weeks now.

[benno573]

Just going to be that person... where's the pictures of the bream??

cracker fish mate, great fun chasing them around off the stones as well.

think the change in legal size to 75cm has a lot to do with the numbers increasing. One of the few that the DPI people appear to have gotten close to right.

[morty85]

Thats a stonker Jew, all on a few worms too! Defo have to give that spot a go one day. Was that in the washout hole in the Northern side of the gorge?

[samsteele115]

Great stuff. Can't wait to get over there again