queensland Yeppoon

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Hi Everyone

Well - it has been confirmed with my parents that I'm going to get the plane up to Yeppoon this Saturday! Pretty exciting, as it's my first time alone on the plane. I'll be staying at my Grandma's with my Uncle as well, and hopefully will come back with some great fishing tales! I'll be up there for the best part of two weeks  

Yewww!!!

I will be adding reports to this thread. I will probably write them down by hand though so you may have to read that (I have HALF decent hand writing). 

The main fish I will be going for/catching could be - 

• Bream (Yellowfin/Pikey)
• Batfish (Short Finned)
• Cod (Estuary)
• Flathead (Dusky)
• Whiting (Sand)
• Prawn (Banana)
• Trevally (Any)
• Shovel-Nose Shark  

And the fish I could get if I'm really lucky is (Unlikely) - 

• Barra (Yep, I know close season)
• Threadfin Salmon
• Mangrove Jack

I hope to have some good reports to show,

Cheers Hamish  

[ellicat]

Good luck.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

1 minute ago, ellicat said:

Good luck.

Cheers Brian!

[benno573]

Where in or around yeppoon will you be based?

[Ed.]

Have fun up there.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

13 minutes ago, benno573 said:

Where in or around yeppoon will you be based?

Rosslyn Bay...

Mainly fish Rosslyn Bay Harbour and Statue Bay  

[Guest]

Lucky bugger , hope you get stuck into some monsters up there mate.

 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

13 minutes ago, Ed. said:

Have fun up there.

 

Just now, Sneaky1 said:

Lucky bugger , hope you get stuck into some monsters up there mate.

 

Thanks Sneaky and Ed. Hopefully you'll hear some good results  

Cheers Hamish

[Kat]

Have lots of fun and fishing Hamish!

[benno573]

8 hours ago, AUS-BNE-FISHO said:

Rosslyn Bay...

Mainly fish Rosslyn Bay Harbour and Statue Bay  

Goodo... always something around the rock wall near the entrance to the marina at rosslyn bay.

 

if you can get down to emu park, about an hour either side of a low tide around the rocks directly down from the singing ship, flick some plastics around and you’ll often turn up jacks, fingermark and cod, as well as trevally and blue salmon.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

22 minutes ago, benno573 said:

Goodo... always something around the rock wall near the entrance to the marina at rosslyn bay.

 

if you can get down to emu park, about an hour either side of a low tide around the rocks directly down from the singing ship, flick some plastics around and you’ll often turn up jacks, fingermark and cod, as well as trevally and blue salmon.

Hey Benno

Yep, we normally do pretty good around here. I've never been to Emu Park fishing, but I'm pretty sure I know the spot. I'm not quite sure I'll get there until my mum comes as my grandma/uncle probably won't want to drive me.

4 hours ago, Kat said:

Have lots of fun and fishing Hamish!

THanks Kat!

Cheers Hamish

[Drop Bear]

So good mate. I am really excited for you. I wonder if you can hire or buy a bike so you can be mobile? 

If you can get to the harbour mouth you will catch fish. I hope you are packing your cast net? 

[rayke1938]

Fishing in that area has improved immanency since the net free zone was introduced. Fitzroy supposedly full of barra and salmon. 

Cheers Ray

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

22 minutes ago, Drop Bear said:

So good mate. I am really excited for you. I wonder if you can hire or buy a bike so you can be mobile? 

If you can get to the harbour mouth you will catch fish. I hope you are packing your cast net? 

Hey Robbie

Yep, that is a possibility. I can walk down to Statue Bay where I’ll be cast netting livies for hopefully something! The harbour wall could work too, I suppose.

My uncle has a boat moored in the harbour. If it’s tough or we don’t want to go out, we sit in the boat and catch heaps. 
 

16 minutes ago, rayke1938 said:

Fishing in that area has improved immanency since the net free zone was introduced. Fitzroy supposedly full of barra and salmon. 

Cheers Ray

Hey Ray

Yep, I have seen pictures in magazines. A Barra would be awesome! 
Cheers Hamish 

[kmcrosby78]

Good luck Hamish, you'll have a ball. I went to boarding school (St Brendan's) in Yeppoon but haven't really done much fishing around there (apart from the Causeway).

[benno573]

Be super careful cast netting along the beaches mate. It is stinger season and box jellyfish tentacles in a cast net will really ruin your day.

[jon]

Good luck mate that’s a great part of the world up there. I hope you get some great fish!

[GregOug]

Sounds great Hamish. Remember to sleep sometime though.

[wesfish]

Flicking lures along the rock wall is awesome fun! Trevs, queenies, bluey's , cod etc and usually 3 or more dust ups lol poppers get the queenies and trevs fired up 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Well, so far the wind has been dismal so we haven’t gone out from the harbour (big chop and swell). I’ve fished once at the end of the harbour break wall for tiddlers (lots of herring around at the moment so our theory is everything is eating them so there’s to much bait in the harbour) and a few more just sitting on the boat today. 
 

Here are sone brief reports - 

Ignore any typos. Sorry for the crappier standard than usual - just hard typing on mobile.

Cheers Hamish 

[GregOug]

I’m just wondering what abs means? You’ve used it quite a lot.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

1 minute ago, GregOug said:

I’m just wondering what abs means? You’ve used it quite a lot.

Yeah, sorry Greg - the phone is hard to type on haha. 
It should be ‘and’. 
Cheers Hamish

[GregOug]

4 minutes ago, AUS-BNE-FISHO said:

Yeah, sorry Greg - the phone is hard to type on haha. 
It should be ‘and’. 
Cheers Hamish

Ah.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

The wind is blowing an absolute gale at the moment, even 15-30 knots makes it almost un fish able  (abs not very smart going out either).

I went out and tried to go land based, but could manage nothing except a lot of wind. Off the boat moored in the harbour is better because I don’t have to cast as far!!! 
 

I suppose it’s better than being like sone clowns yesterday going out in a 3.3 metre tinny, driving on the wrong side of the harbour entrance, anchoring in the harbour entrance, and speeding throughout the harbour! 

Cheers Hamish 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Hi all 

Here are a couple update piccies fit anyone interested. 
 

Short- Finned Batfish

Good Feed

Read the ‘There are no more sharks’ thread by @Drop Bearfor information on this one.

Little 

Keepers 

Cheers Hamish

[Drop Bear]

Yew thats awesome Hamish. 

Well done mate. I bet you are stoked with that lot!!!!! 

[GregOug]

Some nice fish there Hamish. Well done!

[Guest]

Good job Hamish give them hell

[ellicat]

Keep it up, Hamish. You'll have us all feeling like we've been fishing at Yeppoon.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

1 hour ago, Drop Bear said:

Yew thats awesome Hamish. 

Well done mate. I bet you are stoked with that lot!!!!! 

Thank you Robbie, sure am stoked! I’m really hoping for a legal grunter this trip though. That would really make my day! 

1 hour ago, GregOug said:

Some nice fish there Hamish. Well done!

Cheers Greg, hopefully it keeps up.

54 minutes ago, Sneaky1 said:

Good job Hamish give them hell

That sounds like a plan Sneaky. My uncle and I plan to try for some crabs with the frames tomorrow.

25 minutes ago, ellicat said:

Keep it up, Hamish. You'll have us all feeling like we've been fishing at Yeppoon.

Haha, thanks Brian. I don’t know if the wind would make you feel any different though! 
 

Also, my uncle and I went out again this arvo. I got a keeper cod (measured it legal first then panicked because it didn’t look legal, but then after sitting on ice I could see it was that 38cm mark so all good. I thought it was under because it’s gill rakers were up. Haha.) My uncle got about six or seven under size grunter, and a stripey which was kept for bait and actually caught the cod, and I got two grunter. They went off the bite after that cod for some reason. The grunter really loved the yorkies/herring, and the stripey worked equally as well. Just tougher.

Cheers Hamish 

Not Bad! 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

It’s worth mentioning there’s been tonnes of pickers about too. Bream, whiting, grunter... At least they entertain I suppose. 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Heading out this arvo - going for sone muddies with the fish frames. 

[ellicat]

Good luck. Stay away from the claws.

[Old Scaley]

4 hours ago, AUS-BNE-FISHO said:

Heading out this arvo - going for sone muddies with the fish frames. 

Now you’re talking, Hamish. I haven’t had crab for ages. Pots will start to get a workout soon, especially if we get some rain.  Good luck!

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Oops - I thought the wrong thing. We were preparing ours this arvo and going to drive to a new spot to deploy them tomorrow. 
 

This arvo’s fishing was uneventful. Undersize cod, grunter, bream, and one smoking from either a good cod or grassy. It picked up the bait abs sat with it for a brief second than went straight into the mooring rope which seems like a characteristic of cod. Oh yeah, and I got an undersize grassy and just legal bream.

2 hours ago, ellicat said:

Good luck. Stay away from the claws.

Cheers Brian, I’m a bit of a crab scaredy cat so I’ll be extra cautious if we get any. Lol.

32 minutes ago, Old Scaley said:

Now you’re talking, Hamish. I haven’t had crab for ages. Pots will start to get a workout soon, especially if we get some rain.  Good luck!

Thanks Steve, crabbing will hopefully fire up Brisbane way soon! 

Cheers Hamish 

[Drop Bear]

Good luck mate. 

Muddies are so delicious I hope you brain them. 

Great that your uncle is keen too. 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Hi all

Well it's time I got ready and did all the reports, so this post here is going to have them all except one exciting boat trip. Most trips we got some keepers, but other than that it was largely pickers. I'll start now.

The first session was on the day I arrived. I hopped off the plane and met my uncle, and after getting home, rigging up, and catching up with everyone, we went land based at the harbour. We had prawns and pilchard for bait, and we had small sinkers and hooks on. After a little while, we realised the wind would make it very hard to cast with such small weight on so we changed to a larger sinker. I lobbed out a chunk of peeled prawn on the Barra King 650, my uncle with the Penn SSM 650.

There were lots of picker attacks, and this lasted for the whole session. Tap, tap (baited). We had whiting hooks on and failed to hook them, so that is why this report is very short. Some interesting things were that they were hitting my peeled prawn immediately, but my uncle's bait was rarely touched compared to mine, and that my uncle saw someone with some very suspiciously sized Red Emperors getting loaded away. 

The stats of all these sessions are going to be very brief, as I was slack on recording them.

Stats of Trip - 

Weather: Windy, 15 knot wind, slightly cloudy

Tackle used: 20lb and 30lb braid mainlines, 20lb fluorocarbon leaders, size 0 and 2 ball sinkers, size #4 whiting long shank hooks, Rogue Firepoint and Angler Advantage rods, Penn and Abu Garcia reels.

Tide: Outgoing (3.98M High)

Bait used: Pilchard, prawn

Time Fished:3:30PM or so until around 5-ish

Overall Success Rate: 30% - not very good

The next session was the first session out on the boat. Since the wind was absolutely dismal, we just decided to sit down in the harbour. We normally always manage a feed of something here, so I had high hopes today. My uncle had brought the cast net, and on the first throw I did off the boat I got about 30 herring. Score! I chucked 'em in a bucket, with most of them dead, and we planned on using them for bait for the rest of the trip.

Shortly after this, my Uncle hooked up to something that we thought was giant. It took about a 2 minute run on tight, thirty pound drag, then he handed it to me because I was down on the tinny. I got to the fight. It was like a big tug of war - I'd gain some line and it'd go back down. Eventually, it surfaced around fifteen metres out. 

"What the hell is that?!", we said. 

Soon enough, we found out it was just a big, old, dirty, spotted, ray. . We got it up to the boat in about another five minutes as it did the old, "I'm sticking down here" routine. We flipped him upside down, chopped the line off and off he swam away (if you are worried, it's a bad quality whiting hook so it'd be rusted out by now). The next few bites were just tiddlers, and we changed our sinker sizes to a zero. I then blooded the new outfit with a small bartail flatty which was thrown back. 

Throughout the day, little grunter, bream, and trevally came on deck. Everything was released on this day, and it really was an unfortunate fishing session! Here are the stats of the trip -

Stats of Trip -

Tide: High, 7:30AM, 4.4M, Low, 12:50PM, .9M

Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous

Bait Caught: Herring

Bait used: Herring, pilchard, prawn

Fish caught: Pickers and Vermin

Tackle Used: 20lb and 30lb braid mainlines, 20lb fluorocarbon leaders, size 0 and 2 ball sinkers, size #4 whiting long shank hooks, Rogue Firepoint and Angler Advantage rods, Penn and Abu Garcia reels.

Overall Success Rate: 50%

The next trip was not anticipated for high success.. The dreaded Westerly was blowing, which my Uncle says normally makes everything bite bugger all. Fortunately, after a couple picks, the new combo loaded up nicely and in no time I had a batfish on deck. 

This was caught on peeled prawn, so I dropped the exact same thing down in the exact same spot. It didn't take long for some more nibbles, and then I was on another. They all put up a good tussle and provide lots of good fun, even on a tight 20lb drag. I had yanked them up on deck, and was beating my uncle 2-0. 

The next fish I hooked felt a bit better. It was taking more runs and pulling a fair bit harder. The rod was handling it very well, and I was cranking him up from the depths. After a couple more runs, I saw a really good sized batfish. He was about 40cm, and went nicely in the feed. 

The fourth and final keeper for the day was another average sized batty. My uncle had only pulled up one undersize fish this day, and we were still in the shade as it was quite early. I hoicked the batfish up, slit it's throat, and then released it to our bucket.

I hooked up again, but upon landing it, and massive cuda came up and ate it right off the surface. For about 20 seconds, it swum around back and forth (still on the surface) with the batfish in it's mouth. Then when it finally let it go, I got half a fish. What a dirty dog! It'd taken tea!  

The rest of the session was uneventful, except someone fishing lures around the marina did hook up to something massive - it leapt out of the water and was big and silvery, and kind of had a cuda shape about it. I couldn't quite see though, so it also could've been a barra. Regardless, it went straight under a jetty and busted him off .  Here are the stats of that trip - 

Stats of Trip - 

Tide: High, 7:30AM, 4.4M, Low, 2:06PM, .9M

Moon Phase: Waning Crescent

Time fished: About 7:00AM-10/11AM

Bait used: Prawns, pillies, yorkies

Bait caught: - 

Tackle Used: 20lb and 30lb braid mainlines, 20lb fluorocarbon leaders, size 0 and 2 ball sinkers, size #4 whiting long shank hooks, Rogue Firepoint and Angler Advantage rods, Penn and Abu Garcia reels.

Fish Caught: Batfish x 4, stripey x 1, grunter x lots

Overall Success Rate: 80% - good feed

After a quick trip down to Statue Bay to try and fish (it was failed as it was so windy you could hardly cast, and I wasn't bothered to go past 200M down the rocks as I wasn't up for rock hopping), my uncle and I took the tinny out for our routine fish. Nearly immediately, we were getting bites and pickered off. 

It wasn't long before my uncle hooked a small cod from under the neighbouring boat. He pulled it up, dehooked it, and we got back to fishing. I was still fishing, and had only pulled up some pickers for then. My uncle then hooked a rather good fish, which was taking runs back and forth. He managed to get it up though, and we boated a legal cod at about 40cm. I cut his neck, washed out the blood, and then got him into the ice.

Shortly after the cod, I felt some nibbles and managed to pull up a nice little bream at around 36cm. He put up a good fight and was the perfect size to keep, so he and the cod were then happy living partners. It is worth mentioning I caught a smaller batfish as well, but did not bother keeping as we already had four.

Just after the bream, a front moved over us and the wind picked up from about 5 knots to about 25 knots. This put the fish off the bite which was rather unfortunate, and we were rather annoyed as it was looking like it as going to be a hot bite. Yorkies, pillies, prawns, and a little bit of stripey were all tried to no avail. We decided to call it quits before lunch time and went back home to clean the catch. Here are the stats of the trip - 

Stats of trip - 

Tide: 8:00AM, 4.8M, high, 2:40PM or so, .7M, Low

Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous

Time fished: About 6:30AM-11:00AM

Bait caught: -

Bait used: Herring, Prawns, Pillies

Fish caught: Stripey, Cod, Bream, Grunter

Tackle used: 20lb and 30lb braid mainlines, 20lb fluorocarbon leaders, size 0 and 2 ball sinkers, size #4 whiting long shank hooks, Rogue Firepoint and Angler Advantage rods, Penn and Abu Garcia reels.

Overall Success Rate: 80% - good feed

Since we were that keen, we deiced to go back out again that arvo after lunch. We got there, and after just getting pickered numerously, I tried a bit of shelled prawn. I got some grunter with this (in fact, I was at 5 and my uncle was at 1), but they were all about 20cm. Then, I got a good hit. For a brief moment, it sat there, then it took off. It went straight into the pile, giving me no time or way to get it to stop. I unfortunately lost what I thought was a good cod or grassy, especially seeing as though I'd just pulled up a 25cm or so grassy before it. 

They went off the bite after that for me, but my uncle was catching them all on his side of the boat. We each pulled up more grunter, but then I moved up to the front of the boat. I dropped a little fillet of stripey down, and my bait was smashed. I pulled up a legal cod and slit his throat. Straight into the esky with you buddy! 

They then stopped biting after the cod. It didn't take long for us to call it quits, and we set off away back to home to fillet our catch. Here are the stats of the trip - 

Stats of trip - 

Tide: I believe it was rising, low about .7M, 2:40PM, high about 3.8M, half past nine

Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous

Bait used: Pillies, yorkies, herring, prawns

Bait caught: -

Tackle used: 20lb and 30lb braid mainlines, 20lb fluorocarbon leaders, size 0 and 2 ball sinkers, size #4 whiting long shank hooks, Rogue Firepoint and Angler Advantage rods, Penn and Abu Garcia reels.

Fish caught: Estuary Cod x 1, Little grunter, heaps, stripey x 1, grassy x 1.

Time fished: Around 2:30PM onwards

Overall Success Rate 60% - feed acquired

Well that was all the trips we did in the harbour - quite a few good ones landed I suppose. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Thanks for reading too. There's another report I will be doing soon. 

Cheers Hamish

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Here are the pics - 

(Oops forgot to add them in the report).

Cheers Hamish

[ellicat]

Good to see the amount of fishing you got in with some good results.

What are yorkies ?

[Ed.]

How did the Batfish taste?