Where are you fishing this Australia Day / Long Weekend

[Hweebe]

Getting pumped for Australia Day and extended long weekend. Trailering the boat from Brisbane to Hervey Bay for the extended weekend

Wind conditions predominantly light easterlys before increasing in the afternoon. Hopefull the island will give me some protection in afternoons.

Plan will be simple - explore more central bay searching for the birds in the morning before circling back tighter in when conditions start blowing.

[ellicat]

Even when the wind comes up, it's not too bad - around 12 knots, which should be fine in your rig ?? Good luck. Hopefully the spotties are on the chew for you.

@benno573 and I will be heading to the Sunny Coast early.

 

 

 

[Old Scaley]

Might leave all you working class people to it over the long weekend, and get back on the water when the ramps quieten down. Looks like good boating weather so enjoy it if you do get out.   Stay safe.

[Bretto77]

8 minutes ago, Old Scaley said:

Might leave all you working class people to it over the long weekend, and get back on the water when the ramps quieten down. Looks like good boating weather so enjoy it if you do get out.   Stay safe.

Don't blame you

[Jono4500]

Will be trying my luck at Yabba creek with a platoon of youngins so fingers crossed.

 

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Going to get the earliest train I can and fish all day on the river, hopefully get a thready or jew!

[ubnt]

Best luck to you all

[mangajack]

Cabo River early Thursday morning

 

[Cam1988]

Rocklands Reservoir

[Neil Stratford]

I might give the fishing a little break over the long weekend.

We might go down to a ramp somewhere for some prawn rolls and study the various launching and retrieving techniques on offer.

Yes , I’ll also leave the working class citizens have a good shot at the fish population and go back after the holiday and see what dregs have been left behind. Good luck people and stay safe.

[Bretto77]

Need to put the second battery back in my ute so the electric winch on @Kat's boat trailer can be utilised again. Been hand winding a serviced electric winch for too long. Maybe a night trip thrown in somewhere close and convenient just to make sure I have it sorted properly, but I will have to check with the ever illustrious boss

[Bretto77]

I hope that @Neil Stratford will let us all know about the quality of the prawn rolls and associated viewing. Surely there will be scope for a polite boating tip or two.

[Cam1988]

Ended up at Lake Hamilton. No action, but still beautiful.

[mangajack]

I did Cabo River this morning....went to launch at Uhlmann Road at 6am and there was no trailer parks left so slipped around to Beachmere to launch.

Bakers Flats was impassable until 40 mins after the turn to run in. 

Spent the time annoying bream with fake fish, piercing their lips and sending them back while waiting for passage. Best bream in the mid 30's.

Water quality was pretty lousy overall but there was plenty of bait schools around.

Picked up a few flathead for the day, brought one home for a dinner date.

To be honest I thought Cabo River would have fished better than it did today...

Did see one boat playing with little bull sharks about a metre long...nothing out of the ordinary for the Cabo though. I do my best to avoid them.

[ellicat]

My Caloundra day was a good call as there were few others around, however the call was bad insofar as the fishing was rubbish. Managed 1 38cm grassie and several small sharks about 70cm. That was as exciting as it got. Lucky @Leosonfire was with me as we needed to deploy the anchor a few of times, in 20 metres at one stage.

[Old Scaley]

Problems with the leccie @ellicat?

[ellicat]

Just now, Old Scaley said:

Problems with the leccie @ellicat?

It's not 80lb is the only problem. haha

Current became a bit too strong the further into the tide we went. But I didn't raise a sweat, so not complaining.

 

[Neil Stratford]

One of my friends braved the crowd on Australia Day and was rewarded with  a nice Spanish - just a touch over 30kg .He had to move a few times to get away from the flotilla of boats,  but came up trumps with a nice fish once he found a spot away from the crowd. There’s certainly a few good mackerel  about at the moment.

regards

neil

[Hweebe]

Update from the HB trip.

Treated to mint - glassed out conditions for 2 days straight. Very hot and humid though, as the rain threatened but did not arrive throughout the trip.

The conditions meant we could spot bust ups from quite a distance away. Central bay was where all the bird action was, whilst closer to western side of fraser was very quite. Only problem was that the bust ups spooked very easily and with no wind at all, the direction of the bust up proved very unpredictable to get in-front of the feeding fish. 

Most of the bust ups were of the mac tuna (per photo) variety with some school mackerel lurking underneath.

We kept a couple of school mackerel for the trip back to brisbane.

For both days it was mainly chasing bust ups and throwing metal slugs whenever we could get to the spot before the fish went down deep.

What we learned quickly is you usually had one good cast into the bust up for a hook-up before they moved on.

Tried keeping revs constant from the outboard which seemed to help, but our best chances were drifting in the vicinity and you would be granted a bust up magically popping up beside the boat.

Tips for hervey bay bird/fish chasing:

1) Motoring up at speed will give you almost no chance to get a cast in

2) Keeping the revs constant seemed to help bust ups stay longer

3) Sometimes a wait and see approach will work (once you have figured the area the fish are working)

4) Smaller metal profiles silver and red eye seemed to work (although) this was to the detriment to casting distance

5) After the first day you will intuitively know to pick out the "lead" bird. That's the bird you want to chase/follow