mangajack

So Raef and I did a quick run in the Brisbane River this afternoon with the winds dropping off a bit and the showers clearing. Launched at the Pinky at 3pm and fished until 7pm with plastics. My best was a snapp about 55 that was sent back....then a tailor about 50ish.....not welcome in my boat. If you want a feed of tailor go to the grain wharf at Pinkenba at night and throw anything into the lights under the wharf....you could bag out in 30 minutes easily. They all seem to be 40 to 50cm there tonight.....I wasn't interested but had to throw a lure into the lights anyway. Water quality is decent but the run made it a challenge to work the lures well....next weekend will be better tides. No photos, nothing worth the cost of the flash.

Hook up with one of the guides at Rocky...what you learn there will be applicable for the entire Qld salt water scene as far as barra and threadies goes...snapper are too easy, find a reef and throw a 90mm plastic in front of them. River togas are where it is at rather than impoundment togas....again ask the guide at Rocky for some rivers that have been fishing well. Rocky to the coast is about the best fishery along the east coast now for big fish.... If you have time spare and the weather isn't blowing it's tits off then Stanage Bay is a special place...when it fires...for me it is 2 out of 6 runs I couldn't buy a bite, the other 4 runs were excellent.

DPI research indicates that over 80% of mud crab diet is shellfish... I have grabbed a couple of fist sized bunches of bearded mussels and crunched them under foot and placed them in the pot as bait. I have done this twice in two pots, another two pots had mullet. They both worked equally well....no preference with either and both caught decent crabs. These days to can't do this in SEQ with the shellfish protection laws. I suppose it would come down to how well you can create the amino acids and blend them with oils for your attractant. Will they mix giving the correct scent??

As long as you don't cross the line of the property fences there is nothing the property owners can do. It is public land. They will raise their voices loudly but those are public parks. I used to net them for prawns for live baits, had several heated discussions with two property owners.

Every decent rain event washes prawns about sometimes all the way out of the river. In this case the prawns were schooled up on the edge of the channel about 1500m out from the mouth in salty water....the river was recovering from a flush of fresh.

2km sth of Noosa Heads and about 5m of water.

Yes they school up. I got 3 fish from a school last month....there were at least 50 fish to the school on the sounder. I doubt I got the biggest at 1m, the smallest was about 85ish from memory. I think it is entirely seasonal with bait influxes varying. The above trip coincided with a prawn flush from the river the previous few days. Many years ago I watched a school of about 20 fish well bigger than the metre length swim past me at Lion Rock on the Sunshine Coast....they refused to look at either a livie or a lure, just travelling north towards Noosa Heads.

Thanks Hamish. I wish everyone a happy and safe Easter too.

To be perfectly honest, I love my stradics and i have maybe a dozen or so of them. I bought 3 new, the rest I have bought off Marketplace for about 1/3rd of the current prices and generally they are either of the last two models. I did buy a FH1000 two years ago for $25.....happily paid that for the reel and serviced it and upgraded to carbon fibre drag....it is a great workhorse. Don't be afraid to buy 2nd hand reels of a decent quality, plenty of people upgrade from $300 reels to $1000 reels for the **** factor.

It will still flood as always, but at a more controlled rate due to Wivenhoe. Without Wivenhoe and Somerset I think the Brisbane River would have far less siltation and deep mud areas. We need the fresh water supply though and the dams do control the flooding speeds and heights by slowing and prolonging the flood water rather than a full torrent that is shorter lived. I don't understand why in drought years SEQ Water does not permit siltation removal from the dams to increase storage capacity. It is a saleable commodity that some businesses would exploit if given the chance.

I gave it a red hot got for a few months about 5 years ago....I have gone back to plastics and live baits now. Yes you do get some fish but it is more work than enjoyment and plastics get better results and snag up a lot less than jigs.

I doubt the Brisbane River will get another absolute gully raker again. Wivenhoe will moderate the flows effectively so minimal mud is scoured out on the city to port reaches. The Pine and Cabo get pretty harsh flushes that scour the bottom to gravel or rocks every decade or so. If you seriously want to help the Brisbane River then de-centralise Qld away from SEQ. Slowing the growth rate of the area will undoubtedly be a benefit for the river and bay. Just have a look at the population forecasts for your and your surrounding suburbs in the next 30 years....My area will treble in 20 years. I really do not like that thought at all.

Shimano have outpaced Diawa as the most expensive these days....plus they keep screwing eith the reel models too much. I reckon a model of a reel like the FI Stradic should be good for at least 5 years before they release a new model....now about 2 years....no wonder they are getting more expensive.

Somewhat debatable some of the statements. Weed beds are flourishing in some areas that have not seen weed beds in many decades....between Deception Bay and Scarborough plus Hayes Inlet. We have had very large flushes in the Pine River numerous times since 2011....2011 saw every worm bed upstream of Deepwater Bend scoured to rock or gravel. Yet the weed beds are thriving in Hayes Inlet. In the deeper parts of the bay it has been a lot of mud on the bottom from before the 50's when my uncle was operating a prawn trawler. He targeted the mud bottoms for the prawns then. Yes there is a lot of siltation in the bay but this guy overstates the amounts. There is more sediment appearing in front of Redcliffe these days....but that was really first noticeable when Fishermans Island was created and we lost directional tide changes north of Margate Beach...resulting in nearly all water movements there being a slow north to south current. The flats in front of the airport through to Eventide is still the same dirty sand I always remember, no muddier. North Pine Dam and Wivenhoe Dam catch most of the siltation upstream of their catchments. So really most of the siltation of the bay is coming from below those two dams. The weed beds between Deception Bay and Bribie are constantly refreshing themselves....yes they do have a bit of die back after a flush but return quickly with new growth in the months afterwards.

http://www.bom.gov.au/marine/wind.shtml?location=qld-bris&tz=AEDT There is an under 10 knot period, but plenty of 10-15 as well. Where on the bay are you heading?

Interesting the websites are still active and operating. You would think that upon entering a cease of trade the web sites would immediately be inactive.

It would be easier to name what aquatic animal and insect a trout would not eat... Frogs would be a very common snack. I have seen them slurp down skinks swimming across creeks a few times as well.

Burpy creek is navigable downstream about 2km at low tide, at 1/4 tide you can get past the mud banks near the blow through...3 options there hard right will need 1/3rd tide right then straight ahead will get you through at 1/4 tide, left needs 1/3rd tide. I would not take anything bigger than 4.5m down from O'leary ramp....it is tight, it is shallow at times and there are 3 rock bars you might find with your prop at low tide. All that being said though there is some great whiting to be caught in the creek.....my best there is about 40cm, plenty of flathead, lots of bream and a few jacks....not that you would specifically target jacks there. I have caught 3 in 40 years fishing there. The straight immediately upstream of the blow through (3 ways) is a prime spot for big tings on mud worms....you can dig these a little further downstream. Always take a bow saw or small chain saw....maybe 6 times I have had to trim back a tree that has fallen across the creek so I could get the boat through.

In the mid 80's I gave the Cape a good nudge for a season specifically wanting a jumbo jew....i didn't get a jumbo on board but several 6 to 8kg models. I didn't have the luxury of being there for specific bite periods, only the best I could do on that weekend. Yellowtail kingfish were a problem there .... just too big to master off the stones. Cobia though were generally landed. Macks were entirely hap hazzard if you could get one on the line or land it. Evenings for me were the best for snapper .... jew were after 9pm .... pelagics early morning and up until about noon. I seldom got much more than bream or dart in the early to later afternoons....I also not too interested in fishing the arvos too much anyway. No doubt things have changed a lot there since the 80's so all of the above might be trivial. I wonder of any of my old spots there still exist now? I know one broke up and slipped into the sea in the late 80's. If you have a decent storm you should check the bay side beaches afterwards for cockles that are washed up...was easy to collect a hundred or so for bait after a storm.....absolute best bait for snapper off the stones, 3 on the hook and send it out.

A lot of amazon stuff is cheap versions sought from cheap suppliers....like Supercheap Auto and the other cheapie stores. Your reel could be not the latest version or it could be a knockoff.... In some cases there are knockoff crap pieces being sold before the original is released....a soft plastic lure comes to mind there.....

I don't think flathead migrate as such, but they do change their habits a bit around spawning time. I can go to almost any of my normal flathead fishing areas in any week of the year and get some flathead. What does change is how you tempt them to take your line. Some periods I find they will only take a live bait...same location 3 weeks later they will devour anything. For me in three of the locations I am thinking about it is mid August to mid September....we have a algae bloom here every year and everything gets covered in snot weed. During spawning time the smaller males are most likely the fish you will catch....the big females are engorged with roe and less likely to be actively feeding. One thing that does not change year round is the time to chase them....run out tide....Most of my usual places are the bottom 1/3rd of the tide running out.

The Cape would be interesting.... http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60901/IDQ60901.94594.shtml

Early Sunday morning like 2am there is a swing to westerlies under 5 knots.....lets see how long that holds for.

I'd like to just catch something legal to enter into the comp..... I might need some calcium carbide soon....

Mend well Rebel, the fish will be waiting for you.