queensland Another Day With The Dentist

[Old Scaley 3,637]

Around this time for the last 3 years I have promised Mrs Scaley a feed of freshly caught Moreton Bay prawns. Every year she rolls her eyes and sighs, already convinced I won’t deliver. This year, all the signs were good for yesterday - recent rain, some reports of good catches, some spare time for me.  Now all I needed was a deckie to do all the hard work.  As luck would have it, I had a call from the Dentist (not his real avatar or occupation) and he was expecting another bout of industrial diarrhoea on that very day so a plan was hatched to hit Southern Moreton Bay to finally end the prawn drought.

Since he gets very few chances to get out lately we decided to go all out and throw everything at aa ambitious attempt at a seafood basket of prawns, crab and prawns. 

We launched at 5:45am to catch the low tide for some yabbies.  It was then that I discovered that the battery that runs the accessories wasn’t going to deliver for one more trip like I thought, despite charging it up the day before. To make it worse, the Dentist had nagged me about it last time we went out but my thriftiness got the better of me.

We laid out our 8 crab pots in a promising spot, then hit spot A for a quick fish before the prawn search began.  I was first up with a nice whiting in the mid-thirties followed by a bream about 28cm. I kept the bream in case we didn’t catch a feed. The Dentist, meanwhile, persisted with 2 rods as usual and managed to trawl up all sorts of vermin, including small rays and a huge catfish (sorry for the photo quality - not my forte).

After a short session in which we added a few fish to the esky we set off for the main event, the prawn hunt. We checked the pots on the way and there were muddies there, but no legals. So we were hopeful that a longer soak would yield some mouth watering monsters. Prawning without a sounder was always going to be a challenge, but we gave it a red hot crack. I pretended that my casting ability was inferior to the Dentist, so I was able to sit back and marvel as he threw cast after cast - some pancakes, a few figure eights, and I think there was even a trapezoid in there at one stage. We muscled in on a number of prawning scrums (presumably they all had working sounders) from Karragarra Island to Macleay Island and Redland Bay, but not a single prawn was sighted. No one else seemed to be getting any so I couldn’t even blame the Dentist’s casting ability. 

After what seemed like days but was only a few hours we decided to give up on the prawns and  check the pots. No keepers so dropped them in spot B while we had a final crack at the fish. We added a few more whiting to the esky then picked up the empty pots and headed back to the ramp about 2 pm. 

Not the seafood basket we were hoping for, but still a nice feed of whiting (and one prawn that was ironically caught in a crab pot) and a top day out. Lesson number one from the day is that we can only do two activities in one trip, three is too many. Lesson two is for me not to be so tight and replace the battery before it dies completely.  Coincidentally the local German supermarket had 100ah deep cycle batteries for $229 so I grabbed one of those today and will go prawning again soon.

Thanks for reading

 

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[AUS-BNE-FISHO 190]

Hi Old Scaley

Great session, your reports are always good to read  

Pity on the prawns, that's funny how you got it in the crab pot. Did you get any crabs in the net? 

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That is an awesome feed of whiting too, I'm sure Mrs Scaley was very happy with that. Pity on the crabs though.

Cheers Hamish

[ellicat 6,401]

Shame, I was expecting a good haul without having the curse along

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I heard they were both in numbers in the river this week.

 

(Okay, I didn't really hear that) haha

[kmcrosby78 5,676]

Better than working Steve ...... . Couple of nice whiting there and now you've got a battery the prawns won't stand a chance next time

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. At least the 'dentist' won't get gout and may recover in time to make it to work tomorrow .......