mangajack

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/2865878/Brp-Evinrude-E-Tec-115-Hp-2011.html?page=96#manual

Diawa Jbraid is decent braid, i have come close to buying it before. Spin or baitcaster?

I rate braids characteristics in the following importance: 1. is it a fused braid line? least desirable 2. is it a coated line? prefer uncoated. 3. is the line truly limp and memory free? 4. is thin for breaking strain....Siglon PEX8 and Tasline All white are my two long term favorite braids. 5. is it white or orange. 6. Does the PE rating on the box also include actual test breaking strain? If not I do not buy it. For me the PE system for braid is crap you can get the same PE rating across multiple brands and versions and have wildly different breaking strains. Casting diameters mean bugger all if your bait does not have enough weight or is too much weight for the rod that you are using.

My preference is for white or orange simply for visibility for me. For the fish it does not matter at all.

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day. Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long. Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one. Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess. Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines. Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times. Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore. From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months. He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full. Eels were commonly complained about. Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps. He noted captures declining as well.

Tailor have been a problem for me since early December.....I try and avoid them.

usually it is polyethylene.....grades vary greatly. UHMWPE is a high end version of this.....you do not need that high a quality plastic. Holland Plastics, PM Plastics, Nerang Plastics all will have what you are looking for. A google search will give you dozens of suppliers near you.

Good topic....leaves me with mixed feelings on todays fishing. Most notable fish changes I have noticed are the following: Bream....catching genuine 1kg bream used to be normal....fish in the high 30's were normal in the 70's and 80's....biggest one I caught was 47cm but skinny as anything post spawn. In the past two years I have caught two legit 1kg bream. Yellowtail kingfish.....in the early 80's there were large schools of simply massive fish in Moreton Bay....1.2 to 1.5m fish. About mid 80's NSW had massive YTK fishtraps being used....almost wiped out the stocks migrating the coast....Have not seen one over 1.2m in decades. Snapper....numbers have not changed much but average capture sizes are about 1/2 the size of the 70's is most areas I have fished. Interestingly snapper were either bait or trolled hard bodies back then and plastics didn't work well....plastics have taken over, but I have noticed a bit of decline in the past 6 years in two places that hold decent fish....bait is still catching the same amount. Sharks....seasonal for me and I didn't target them too often but I don't see the numbers of sharks I used to in the 70's and 80's.....I remember seeing them in the hot water outlet of the power station in frightening numbers, dozens visible any time of the day or night.In the Bribie Passage we used to lose decent snapper and jew to sharks fairly regularly back in those days...I have lost fewer than 5 fish in the past decade to sharks. I know lots of guys have real problems with them these days, but I just don't have the issue enough to bother me. Gold spot cod......they are bloody tiny these days on average. I could manage 80cm cod every run to the port in the 80's....a 50cm cod now is noteworthy. The biggest changes though are fishermen and women.....numbers are simply massive now and lots of those are decked out with high tech sounders and GPS units....Sure most don't use them well but still quite a lot use them effectively and catch lots of fish.....and this brings forward the next point. Fish education.....catch and release might be good for fish stocks but it does educate them about the lures or baits we use. The "in" lure to use today gets flogged in the faces of the fish so much they learn to not touch that lure. Now catch and release is essential for all undersized fish and I fish myself also selective of the size of fish I will harvest.....I will not take snapper under 50cm for example....so I am guilty of educating the fish with the lures I use too. I recently dug out an old lure box from the 80's....I will be giving these lures a run heavily over this winter to see how they go.....will let you know. Also of note here is the environment.....it has changed massively in a lot of places, some better and some worse. In the 80's Redcliffe tides ran south for the incoming and north for the outgoing all the way up to Scarborough reef and probably beyond....todays water movement is a slow constant southward current and no north movement at all....This occurred with building Fishermans Island at the Port. The reefs off Redcliffe are well silted these days as well. Water quality of the Brisbane River is far better today than in the 80's up to Breakfast Creek....not much data outside of that though. We had regular droughts back then as well....salinity levels were higher then than in the past 15 years with the constant flushes happening.....results show in the captures. In the mid 80's there was a quite severe drought where we saw lots of fish that were normally offshore being caught inshore. Pearl Perch land based around the Tweed and on the sunshine coast headlands....spanish mackerel in Bramble Bay...cobia at Dohles Rocks....YTK at Shorncliffe pier.

For me I get up to about 10 of these fish a year in SEQ. I am not sure if they are more numerous now or our techniques and lures have changed that is enticing more bites. II regularly caught smaller models in the 80's in Bribie Passage....usually on small live baits. These days I catch larger models on soft plastics off Redcliffe, at the Port and in the Pine River usually.....mostly around the 60cm mark.....I think the presentation is the key to not catching many or any small ones these days.

About 12 years ago i caught my first legal nanny off Redcliffe, there had been small models about for about 5 years before that that I know of. I have since caught 3 more legals and maybe around 10 undersized models. They are definitely becoming more common. My decky caught one at Clara Rocks in February...undersized but still surprising.

Two interesting sessions for your party. I find the bridge fishes best drift fishing it rather than anchoring....the current is not an issue then. Explore the channel up from the bridge to around 750m....there is lots of low reef through the area that all hold fish.

Good work Andrew. Nice selection of components and finishing.

I agree with Neil, different spots at different stages of the tide.... Incoming look for feeding banks about to get a few inches of water on them....they will be feeding hard there for about 30 minutes. Keep following the flooding banks as the water rises. You want to cast into about 6 inches of water roughly. Once the bites have tapered off you need to find where they will wait for food to come to them....look for a sand bank that tapers down to the river bank along the river.....you can bet a years wages they will sit there until the top of the tide vacuuming up all the worms and small crabs and yabbies dislodged by the sand bank being disturbed. You really should recon the river towards the last of the run out tide to learn where this high tide spot will be. Ideally the sand bank should be at least 1/2 the river wide and taper down to the bank on one side only on the upstream end.....the fish will be over the last 15 metres of that bank guaranteed. Google Earth Pro shows these sand banks quite well too....another way to plan your run.

I have never had an issue with 1.5m of chain fr my reef anchor....or sand anchor. I think 2.5m of 8mm chain will be all you need in a 4.5m. Dyneema / spectra is not a good option for anchor rope...it has next to no stretch and often will un-nest an anchor with surges coming down the rope. Use silver rope, it is a good stretch rope that helps keep an anchor holding.....plus it is enormously cheaper. If using a cheap reef anchor you can shorten the spikes to about 6 inches long and bend them quickly back towards the eye....not long slow bends. they will hold better and release better when you need them to. Long slow bends are far less effective.

Kyzanka in Mackay. Way over priced.

Two bends up past Castle Hill is the slabs.....between the concrete slabs and the rocks before them is a large reef crossing the river......you can't miss it.

Plenty of fish smashing prawns up near the slabs in the pine on Anzac day....brassy trevally, jew and tailor....been a few decent jacks there recently too.

The Ripples at Bribie would be worth a shot in the kayak.....just outside the mouth of the canals near Bansia Beach. Been a lot of squire there recently. Not as bad for the winds as Redcliffe and same sized fish.

That is the most popular spot there for squid....and the most accessible.

Good to see you back at the water's edge again. Thanks for the report.

I am leaning towards too many flushes or floods in the 13 years since 2011 has altered the habitat and or bait locations and cycles. We get dusky flathead all along the east coast and deep into the Gulf....so I am not sure it is a temperature change that has them shut down. I used to catch lots in Mackay and the Capricorn Coast when I was there. 2011 saw every worm bed in the Pine River scoured to rock and repeated in 2013....the worm beds returned after 5 or 6 years and things started to normalise...since 2019 we have had reasonable to large flushes recurring randomly in relatively quick succession....some in season, others not. I think this weather pattern needs a break....we actually need a drought to stabilise the rivers and creeks. Getting heavy flushes 4 times a year is not good year after year.

I will go high and say 11 years

One thing of note Raef and I have noticed lately....flathead have become a pretty scarce for us capture in the last 18 months....areas we normally can't avoid them are now pretty much flathead free zones. One section in the pine we fished today has always been a flathead area as far back as I can remember (50 odd years of fishing this stretch) and yet today and the last 4 visits there have not produced a single flathead.....the norm was 6 to 10 flathead there. I have noticed the same thing in the Bris River, Cabo River and Ningi Creek....hot spots gone dead. Anyone else noticed this since the 2011 and 2013 floods?

Dohles was ok...Deckie dropped me off at the pontoon, I reversed down without waiting and deckie drove on and we were off the ramp in under a minute. There were 4 boats being tied down and about 6 boats arrived at the ramp just after I pulled out....it would have been busier then. Dohles ramp is pretty good being 3 lanes.....trailer parking is limited to about 30 trailers i guess...sorry 25 trailer parks....i just checked on google earth pro. Best thing about it is there is a cafe that does great coffee at the ramp that opens at 5.30am every day.

I came into the Shorncliffe foreshore to try for a squid or two on the way back from Reddy....PEOPLE!!! geez....there was at least 500ppl on the jetty, probably closer to 800 than 500. Absolutely crazy at about 9.30am.