rayke1938

Sorry who is it?

Strongly suspect
 
 

Donuts at western arm this morning. Neils wife packed some chocolate ones so we did not miss out. Shrimp were extremely scarce with a lot of pots empty and only a few had shrimp in them. As a result we had ran out of bait by 9am, 17 bass one tandan ,one eel and only 2 barred grunter for a hungry eagle.

Strongly suspect
 
 

So Raef and I hit the Port today to make the most of the great weather.
Launched at 5am at the Pinky and was not far from the ramp when the first legal squire came on board.....sent it back.
Followed that up with somewhere around 14 squire for the morning....kept one at 47cm, the rest returned.
Probably 3 were undersized and nothing worthy of a photo.
Raef did hook something we chased in the boat for a few hundred metres before his leader parted.....10lb leader was not up to the task.
Found some sleeping jew that couldn't be woken again.....left them when I felt thoroughly defeated....should have left earlier.
Last run up to the gateway and found some lurkers in the bottom of the main channel....decent sized fish....got one tap on the line that i did not set a hook into....so they were jew there too.
Pulled the pin at about 1pm and home to clean up.

I got an invite from Ray K  and Rick to do a bass trip to Hinze dam this morning.
Ray and Rick have been on skid row of recent times, finding it difficult  to boat any bass at all. Clocking up a few dreaded donut trips in succession - times were  grim for the  2 bass kings.
Desperate times called for desperate measures , so I decided to turn their worlds upside down and shouted chocolate donuts for breakfast before even contemplating dropping a line in the water . We all took our donut medicine and moved on to break the drought.
It was a three step process to get the little blighters biting again.
1. We took our donut medicine at 5.30am , and all agreed to move on from the recent dark times.
2. Rick was assigned the job of  clearing the dam of eels , catfish and  the barred grunter (vermin)  , he did this very well and didn’t  complain too much , he just got on with it and achieved an excellent result.
3 . We then proceeded the catch Bass till the bait ran out .
Success was achieved and the bass boys can now move on and get back to scoring a whole heap more fish.

Headed out with 'The Dentist' today. Up at 2.30am for a 5am launch from Mooloolaba.
Headed to the area where we've had success on the grassies in the past. I managed a grassie first cast and then again on the second cast. Not monsters but were big enough to not need to measure them - mid 30's. At the same time, The Dentist was getting snagged and busted off and was retying for most of the first part of the morning.
I thought it would be my day to out-fish him. Wrong. I didn't add a legal fish after those first two. Meanwhile the boat tally went to 8 grassies to low forties (Av size was down a bit this trip), 3 Spanish Flag and a Hussar. Only bothered by a few sharks, but nothing like the Bay. Towards stumps I landed three Red Throat Emperor which was cool to see. Undersized though.
A Wobbygong finished my day. On the way back to the ramp we came upon plenty of schools of Tuna busting up - both Long Tail and Mack.
Thanks for the day, mate.
 
No pics as we didn't have time at the end of the day, due to being delayed because of low discipline levels and having a few casts at the tuna.

Donuts at western arm this morning. Neils wife packed some chocolate ones so we did not miss out. Shrimp were extremely scarce with a lot of pots empty and only a few had shrimp in them. As a result we had ran out of bait by 9am, 17 bass one tandan ,one eel and only 2 barred grunter for a hungry eagle.

Donuts at western arm this morning. Neils wife packed some chocolate ones so we did not miss out. Shrimp were extremely scarce with a lot of pots empty and only a few had shrimp in them. As a result we had ran out of bait by 9am, 17 bass one tandan ,one eel and only 2 barred grunter for a hungry eagle.

I headed out this morning for a flick, and didn't realise until I got there that I'd left my bigger heavier lures at home, as I'd been drilling them out and filling them with lead shot to get some extra distance as the fish have been holding out pretty far recently.
All I had was some soft plastics and small lures, so I packed up the big rod and fished the little 3kg finesse rod with a 1000 size reel and 6lb braid.
Things went pretty slow until I started seeing some yellows following in my plastic, so I put on a little atomic vibe and fitted an assist hook on the rear, the 1st fis o got was a small foul hooked carp, so I wasn't to hopeful. But then I landed a couple aof reasonable yellows right at the bank tea bagging at a ledge, lost two more and then got smoked by something big.
I hooked in and had a hell of a fight thinking I'd foul hooked another carp as there was no head shakes just a lot of weight holding ground. I played it for another 10min, then it came up about 15 yards out and it was a very solid cod.
Every time I got it near the net it just swam away, it just wouldn't go near the net at all. My drag was light, my rod was too, 6lb braid didn't give me much confidence and the little hooks didn't fill me with a lot of hope either, I couldn't afford to mess anything up.
So I slow played it, tried to manoeuvre it into a better position and finally got it in the net.
74cm 6kg cod on 6lb braid, trmurned out being a pretty good day after all.

 

I dug some worms yesterday afternoon and took the little boat for a spin down to Jumpinpin this morning . 
Launched at the Alberton ramp at about 5.30 am and enjoyed the cruise down out through the mouth of the Logan River then , down past the power lines  , and ended up down near Golden Bank .The sand flies were bad as usual, till the sun got  properly up and the breeze picked up a little - lucky I took long pants, shoes and a full can of bushman’s.Sorted my way through undersized bream , grunter ,flathead and sting rays and ended up with a bakers dozen of pretty good quality whiting  by 10am  , got one that gave Kats 40cm model a little nudge ,  but fell short by a few mm’s and wasn’t good enough to  make the grade.
Just had some for tea , they’re hard to beat ! 

Upstream ? We went downstream a little and water appeared clearer maybe we should have gone to Queen street. Hinze western arm on thursday .
 

Donut again at Somerset with Rick and Joy, Launched at kirklea went as far as powerlines with live shrimp. Donut result enjoyed pies at Fernvale,

Upstream ? We went downstream a little and water appeared clearer maybe we should have gone to Queen street. Hinze western arm on thursday .
 

Took my brother for a mackerel trip today.
With a week break on the Spanish Mackerel closure opening up today they were the target species.
With  4 super fresh baits  acquired we  went straight to one of my favourite spots ,drove over it , and there was an extremely large school of Mac’s at home , they were stacked 24 metres deep.
I put two  tuna into the water, they were dead but still bleeding , we both knew it was going to be a sure thing that they’d go off super quick . I’d just finished putting the second bait out and the first one went off. Couple of minutes later he was in the esky . My brother turned the boat around and ran back over the fish , I deployed the second bait , it was bang again,  stupidly I grabbed the rod again ,my brother was pissing him self laughing as he knew I was already stuffed from the first fish . After a few swear words , he gaffed the second fish , then we went and got a couple of Grassies before heading home . 





 

Donut again at Somerset with Rick and Joy, Launched at kirklea went as far as powerlines with live shrimp. Donut result enjoyed pies at Fernvale,

Donut again at Somerset with Rick and Joy, Launched at kirklea went as far as powerlines with live shrimp. Donut result enjoyed pies at Fernvale,

If you can get your net down in 15m of water and manage the current there are big prawn schools out from luggage point around the leads marker level with the front wall of the port yesterday. Schools were 2 to 3m deep on the sounder.

I thought I might share some of my experiences with Livescope so far.  
First disclaimer - I am a tech head (even though I am almost 60).  I studied IT and have loved every bit of nerdy gadgets that has come along even though I never actually followed through and became an IT professional - just managed them for a while.
 
So got my new boat in September and decided that it needed all the gear - yep all the gear no idea.  
But thanks to the wonders of the internet, youtube and the like I was able to do a crash course on using live sonar, what the settings were and how they affected what you saw.  
Now I do not claim to be an expert but i think I am learning pretty well the more time I spend on it.
Now I have Garmin Livescope Plus (ie LVS34) - in my personal opinion they were the originators and are very heavily invested in it and at the time I made the decision were a generation infront of others.  Also I like Garmin screens….I like the menus etc and as a bay/estuary guy their transducers generally were going to suit so I didnt have to have a mixed bad of brands.
I have shared two videos so far - on in fresh water and one in saltwater.  Both in relatively shallow water however have been in as deep as 18 metres with it.  Quite a few learning there as it is best to manually adjust the depth range and as I discovered you need to push your distance range at the same time (or reduce it) to ensure you are seeing in a usable range.
Suprisingly they are quite easy to use out of the box.  Garmin have two different settings (its called focus) which are optimised for salt or fresh.  Other than that its the gain (which is the sensitivity) ie the clutter you see on screen.  Colour is personal - most like amber….same for me.  
Once you see it in action its really easy to understand, you can see your lure, if its in the beam, you see fish move around and you can see the distance and depth.
Benefits I have seen so far is that you can actually see things your other sonar will not show eg big barra stalking in tight treed country.  Up under lilly banks and like today schooled fish that are easily seen in a lot of other clutter.
Like all marine electronics time on water is the key….
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Went back down the port this afternoon looking for more jew like last week.
Found scattered jew near where I found them last week on the run out....water was running too hard to effectively fish....went up the river for two small squire...1 about 40 the other about 55cm....the 55 came home.
Went back to the jew at the change of the tide and they were not schooling or feeding.
Ended up anchor locking over a couple of pairs of fish a few times for no result....that's fishing for you.
I gave my deckie the snapper to take home....poor bugger didnt get a single sniff today.
Nothing worthy of a photo today.
 

Went to NPD this morning/ At least we did better than our disastrous donut trip to the Hinze eastern arm on thursday. Took us 6 hours before the only 29cm  bass was boated. 27 forkies kept us entertained prior. Forkies up to 55cm. Quite surprised how clear the water is and very little debris. I fully expected that our shrimp pots would have been swept away but they were all there.

Went to NPD this morning/ At least we did better than our disastrous donut trip to the Hinze eastern arm on thursday. Took us 6 hours before the only 29cm  bass was boated. 27 forkies kept us entertained prior. Forkies up to 55cm. Quite surprised how clear the water is and very little debris. I fully expected that our shrimp pots would have been swept away but they were all there.