queensland Bay Schoolies

[Miller 197]

After doing the mother’s day thing and going out for a nice breakfast Dad, my uncle and I headed out at about 11 from manly for a fish. We went over to mud in hope for a snapper and started a drift in about 4-5m of water and got stacks of undersized squire and sweetlip. We decided to head out into deeper water of about 12m and try our luck at another drift.

After drifting for about 20 min we saw a massive school of bait on the sounder so we threw out the anchor and jigged up a few for bait and deployed them out the back. It didn’t take long before one of them got picked up and began screamed off so dad quickly jumped on the rod. He got it just close enough to the boat to see it was a school mackerel before it shook the stinger hook and swam for it freedom… damm :blush:

Long story short, the baitfish wouldn’t take out bait jigs anymore so we got the burley flowing which kept the fish around and started throwing small slugs on light gear (10lb braid and 20lb mono leader) and managed 12 in the box and let about 5 undersized ones go. At about 12 30 the bay had glassed out and you could see the mackerel chasing the lure to the boat which was awesome to see and got the heart pumping! :woohoo:

Left them biting and was home at 2 to clean the boat and fish. Was a great day out on the water and my uncle who hasn’t done much fishing in the bay might be addicted haha.

[crazywalrus]

well done. That would have been exciting to see them chasing the slugs.

[Wbgredcliffe]

It's a great day when you come home with a bag like that. Have been out twice in the last week and the weather has been fantastic. This week looks a little less kind.

Wayne.

[Old Scaley]

Great result. I am very jealous having come home yesterday with only a couple of smallish (35cm) tailor and 3 sand crabs to show for 7 hours on the water. There were some big schools of longtails working in close to the rock wall at the front of the port, and these distracted me for a while for no result. Heaps of grinner no matter whether you were trolling hard bodies, flicking plastics or using fillets of grinner on the bait rod. Also heaps of small tailor snipping off the plastics and jigheads. Some bigger ones among them but the smaller fish seemed to beat them to the lure. Got a couple of 39 cm flathead on curly tails and a few undersized squire on gulp prawn style plastics. Also hooked a huge ray on a grinner head that I had floating out the back as a speculator.

What a beautiful day on the bay, though, no matter what you caught.

[kmcrosby78]

Nice work mate, that's a great haul of schoolies. Mind if I ask what size slugs they were taking?

[Miller 197]

crazy - Yeah it was super exiting to see them follow the lures in, occasionally when we had one hooked near the boat you could see another one or two following it in down deeper!

Wbgredcliffe - Yeah its always a good feeling heading back in with some fish in the box!

old scaley - It defiantly was a great day on the day.. it really flattened out for the afternoon which was nice. sounds like you had a fun day with pleanty of fish caught.. and seen. those longtails will be the death of me haha

And kmcrosby - we got them all on gillies baitfish between 15-30g and even 40g lures casted out and then cranked back in flat out

[tunafreak]

Nice feed of macks there Miller, they are allot of fun those schoolies, they are usually pretty thick this time of year before they go quiet for the winter.

[Miller 197]

Thanks tunafreak! hopefully they stick around for a few more weeks to come.. the water temp is already starting to drop quite a bit

[tunafreak]

Yeah we were snapper fishing off Redcliffe on that same morning and the water temps were around 22 deg, after donuting on the snaps (barely got a nibble )we were about to pack it in at around 11 and some longtail came through, we only had our light snapper gear on board but said "what the hell", didn't take long and I was hooked up, the fish near spooled my little Stella 2500 and we chased it under petrol power to get some line back and had him to the boat after 10 mins or so.

Things went quiet after that but we now both had the longtail itch so made the decision to head out and scratch it. Once out at the grounds it didn't take long to find the fish and we were on with a double hook up, I won't bore you with the details but we caught 4 or 5 each and popped a few fish each too......good times.......the best part of the day though is when a massive school of spotties came through, we ended up sitting in the middle of them having a good old time hooking fish every cast and giggling like a couple of school girls, they were so aggressive that we ended up throwing bare jig heads at them and they took them without hesitating...........so what started off as a crap day turned into an insane session thanks to that school of longtails that came through as we were about to head home.......the amount of bait an pelagic action in the bay over the last 3 months has been crazy and just quietly I'm LOVING IT

Cheers,

Al

[Miller 197]

That sounds like an insane session!! Its trips like that, that make memorys to last a lifetime! Well done!

Im hoping to get stuck into my first longtail this year :woohoo:

[tunafreak]

Yeah it was a good session but to be totally honest most of our sessions since around the beginning of February have been just like it, even when I took the misses and kids out a couple of times they got stuck into the action........we've been spoiled this year, it's shaping up to be like 2012......one thing I don't understand though is there is never anyone else out there getting into them, I've always got the schools to myself, even on Sunday's......don't get me wrong I'm happy to have them to myself but it's just weird no one else is giving them a go when there is so much activity out there, especially the spotties, lots of boats come past and must see the bust ups and see us hooked up fighting fish but they just sail on by.....