Some Cold Water Fishies From Tassie

[fifis101]

Went back home to to Tassie for a week to spend some time with the folks. I got out on the Tamar River a few times and we were killing it on the flatties with micro jigs. Sorry no photos as there was no size to them, just heaps of them. We did have a big feed for lunch when we got home!

Had a good session on the squid and barracouta out the headlands. The coota were in plague proportions around the 50cm mark. You could literally jiggle you lure out the side of the boat and hook up! We were trying to get them to jump out of the water and grab the lure mid air. You could literally make them dance for you! We did get one to grab the lure mid air which was crazy to watch! We kept a few between 70-80cm and a couple of small ones for bait. I was kicking myself that I didn't have any topwater lures with me as it would have been crazy fun watching them get airborne hitting the lure.

We went back out a few days later with topwater lures at the ready but we couldn't find a single coota anywhere! So instead we got a heap more squid and micro jigged for reefies. The wrasse down there are in ridiculous numbers, it's just a shame they don't taste any good like they do up here. They pull like freight trains in under 5m of water with the water so clear you could sometimes see them take your lure!

Not many photos taken as we were having so much fun.

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[fifis101]

Just a couple more photos I found. A micro jig after catching about 20 coota! A good feed of cleaned squid. These were 4L containers. And a big arse albatross they did a few circles around the boat. It doesn't show it bu damn it was a big bird.

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[kmcrosby78]

Great report and photos mate, sounds like great fishing. What sort of flatties? Seems criminal that those wrasse aren't good eating like they are up here - solid fish!!  Oh and fantastic squid - yum!!

[fifis101]

11 hours ago, kmcrosby78 said:

Great report and photos mate, sounds like great fishing. What sort of flatties? Seems criminal that those wrasse aren't good eating like they are up here - solid fish!!  Oh and fantastic squid - yum!!

The common flattie down there is the sand flathead. They are much smaller than the dusky up here. Min size has only recently gone up to 32cm from 30cm for as long as I can remember. The bag limit is 30 too per person I think. There has been some changes recently, so I'm not 100% up to date with the regs.

The wrasse are so tame down there too. When I used to go spearfishing at times they would just come up to you to check you out, sniffing the end of the spear! The one in the photo is a common larger one but they do get over 4kg and go pretty hard. I'm sure there is a way you can cook them but the meat is very soft and mushy and their skin extremely tough, so they are hard to clean in the first place.

[Angus]

I missed this report! Very interesting and different cheers!