Jump to content

Whirlwind trip to Gladstone

benno573

By benno573
in Saltwater

Recommended Posts

benno573 Rising Star

benno573

Posted
Posted

Hi all,

I headed up to Gladstone on the weekend for a 50th bday party on Saturday night (that's a totally different story but i digest...;) ). Had a few hours to spare in the afternoon so decided to pack a rod in the car and head down to a few of my old faithful LB spots from yesteryear when i lived there.

Unfortunately, Gladstone being Gladstone, my most faithful spot is now inaccesibale owing to copious amounts of coal being put where there used to be a road. Bugger! Spot 2...

Headed to spot 2. If anyone wants to know where pm me for details, you'll need to know Gladstone to know where. its on the river, is a rock wall with some decent structure out from it and a muddy area and a small creek at one end. this is where i decided to fish. was very little activity on the bait fish front so that pretty well wrote off decent barra and queenies unfortunately. :( so i tied on a g-vibe and started flicking around the likely looking areas. to get to these, i had to put on my "mud socks", and today they were bordering on knee high! :dry: first fish caught was a 43cm cod, which was released after a very mediocre fight. i'd like to add at this point that no pictures were taken this trip, it's a bit hard to walk back up to your gear when knee-deep in mud! :blush: i felt it kinder to release the fish quickly as opposed to mucking around getting the camera. after that, a run of good sized moses perch came around, biggest went about 35cm, all bigger than about 28cm. went a little quiet for a while, then i cast up the small creek just for fun. BANG! whoa, that's not a moses. big slash, a bit of a jump, a big head shake, a couple of good runs on the light gear, and then landed a 40cm-ish barra that batted well above it's average! :woohoo: while it is only a little bloke, it is my first HB caught barra! YAY! released the little fella to go and fight again another day. my tiger-striped g-vibe was going awesome! turned around (with great difficulty) and aimed for the snag i was pulling fish from earlier. is that a hit? some weed? bit of weight there... and then i landed the tiniest coral trout in the history of the world. it would have been flat out being 6" long, and it had nailed the g-vibe! crazy times. agressive little bugger thats for sure! he was released unharmed. by this stage the tide was getting closer, so i spent the next 15 minutes swearing and struggling and made it back to the rock wall and hard, solid ground! nice. found a place were the rocks met the water and spent 15 minutes washing my legs off before the old lady came and picked me up.

a great little session, bought back a few memories of days gone by too.

sorry it's a bit epic... some of the members on this site could use the reading practice! :P

also - all fish were caught on my wilson live fibre rod won at the kayak camp! it's getting a good species count up! now including: barra, cod, coral trout, moses, dart, tailor, bream, whiting, flathead, stingray, squire, grassy sweetlip, sweep. awesome!!! so stoked with it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
benno573 Rising Star

benno573

Posted
  • Author
Posted

bit of an interesting story about coral trout in gladstone...

a few years ago, there was a huge industry for live coral trout of export to japan and china. licences were issued, it was pretty heavily regulated etc. they caught this boat fishing off gladstone who had no licence but had in excess of 1500 live coral trout on board. they bought the boat back to gladstone awaiting charges to be laid etc. during this, the trout were kept basically in a cage in the boat, which wasn't good as it relied on the boat being on for fresh water flow etc. a few of the locals woke up to this and one night decided to set the remaining live trout free, approx 1000 of them... in auckland creek in gladstone. since then, there has been many reports of trout being caught by very surprised bream fishos in the creek and around the adjoining marinas etc. the trout i caught is evidence these guys are still around and are obviously happy enough with their surrounds to breed. there is good structure and snags in the creek and healthy populations of bait fish and prawns so i guess they thought "why leave?". all good signs for the future! :woohoo:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
uglyfish Newbie

uglyfish

Posted
Posted

benno573 wrote:

bit of an interesting story about coral trout in gladstone...

a few years ago, there was a huge industry for live coral trout of export to japan and china. licences were issued, it was pretty heavily regulated etc. they caught this boat fishing off gladstone who had no licence but had in excess of 1500 live coral trout on board. they bought the boat back to gladstone awaiting charges to be laid etc. during this, the trout were kept basically in a cage in the boat, which wasn't good as it relied on the boat being on for fresh water flow etc. a few of the locals woke up to this and one night decided to set the remaining live trout free, approx 1000 of them... in auckland creek in gladstone. since then, there has been many reports of trout being caught by very surprised bream fishos in the creek and around the adjoining marinas etc. the trout i caught is evidence these guys are still around and are obviously happy enough with their surrounds to breed. there is good structure and snags in the creek and healthy populations of bait fish and prawns so i guess they thought "why leave?". all good signs for the future! :woohoo:

i have caught em in the marina in glady as well,all tho the story i heard was different..i was told by a reliable person that pioneer seafoods used to keep all the under weight and sized trout in live trout nets simular to what they use to farm tuna and such down south,and some local divers went for a swim and cut the nets and let all the trout out...ive caught up to 9 trout in a session there a few years ago when i fished glady and the narrows every weekend..

Link to comment
Share on other sites
benno573 Rising Star

benno573

Posted
  • Author
Posted

BassTracker wrote:

Coral trout, the yummiest fish in the world, have any of you guys eaten them from the creeks and marina there? Do theytaste the same?

they sure do taste the same! i caught one that was about 45cm from the marina one night, went down a treat!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...