mangajack

I'd be asking one of the Merimbula or Eden fishing clubs....it is their home ground.

So you haven't done a run from Brissy to Proserpine for a fish for a day before?? Talk about a lack of commitment!! heheh

Some fish are structure based....cod and blueys etc....there is no way you can fish these guys light and expect them to stay away from cover. I can't recall getting bricked by a snapper though....i have had them swim around the far side of a bit of structure and break me off but I do not think they targetted the structure as a place of refuge like a cod would do. Similarly with jew and threadies, both have been on the other side of a pilon or rope or whatever and I have lost the fish because i couldn't chase it fast enough. I have caught plenty of jacks in heavy reef on 6lb braid.....less than 20% will fight hard or bury into the rocks, the rest will battle out in open water on fairly light drag settings.....fish them hard and they will bust you most times. A scared dog that fights always fights harder. Don't scare the fish.

If you want to explore as you go I suggest heading east from the service stations on the freeway around Beerburrum. you have 3 main creeks in the area and a LOT of feeder gullies that hold bass too. My best from a sink hole there was about 53cm. Find a gully and bushwhack up from there....it is amazing where they turn up, often totally land locked.

Exactly the same with jacks....you will get broken up far more often on heavy gear that 6lb line...

Heaviest drag on my reels is 15kg.....on 30lb braid I don't use half of that. As for sharks I am quick to disengage spotlock on a decent fish and let him swim away a bit to get away from the reef before putting the hurt on them. To be honest I do not have much trouble at all with sharks wherever I go....river, bay or offshore.

Either put it out there you want to get on board a boat or charter in your area and I am sure you will get a good response. Coming from your fishing background you have an awful lot to learn what works here so opt for an inshore charter first up is me best advice....at least then they will actively teach you what works up front. Then hitch a ride with some local fishos.

Some is better than none any day. I can't see a break in this weather for another 8 days or so.

With the price of pillies these days cubing is a rather expensive shot for some....I generally berley with mash and tuna oil first to bring fish about, then begin cubing 30-45 minutes later. Next calm evening I am heading to Mud to work a new to me rubble patch I can't remember ever seeing a boat on. I will likely berley with mash and tuna oil first then cube with both pillies and half hardiheads...slipping a hook into a few hardies and pilly cubes. I had one session at Redcliffe a long time ago (around 1982 i guess) and used hardies because we forgot the pillies.....caught a lot of bream but also some very good snaps up around 60-80cm.

As the title suggest..... I normally use tuna oil on laying mash or similar. If I am cubing I just use pilly pieces. Now I am wondering if hardiheads chopped up would be the go?? big schools of them in the bay now

Good job getting a carp on a hard body...not a common thing.

Check the bottom of the transducer has not had a big impact, especially from a rock whilst being trailered. I lost a transducer from a rock a few years ago. When you check the transducer cable, look closely for a pin broken off in the sounder..

Thready recently about 105cm early last year, about 25 years ago i got one that was 123cm. Jew recently is 1 metre, back in the 1980s got a few about 120cm under the motorway in the city reaches at night on hard body lures being trolled. I stopped fishing the bris river in the 80's, been re-learning it the past 3 years.....so different now. So much missing reef these days because of dredging for ship basins....the port back then only handled 2 ships max. Sunstate Cement wharf was a new installation then. Most ships travelled through to Hamilton to unload. in the 1970's i used to do a fair bit of shark fishing in Bulimba Creek in the hot water outlet of the old powerstation (now Visy Paper). Baits didn't last more than a minute then.

I take photos of photo worthy fish only....for a snapp that would be over 60cm fork length, a legal jew, a 65cm + flathead, a 50cm+ jack. I never ever pose with a fish.....my face will break a camera. I guess I am spoiled to have caught lots of good large fish in my younger years....fish these days seem small and insignificant to me unless it is large by today's standards. Most people these days can't fathom a std Wednesday night session for jacks where you boat 8 fish in 2 hours within 30km of Petrie....or more than 20 jacks in a 3 hour window just north of Bundy.... It was nothing at all to go to the rock wall at Pelican Park and catch 6 flathead over 60cm in 30 minutes on small hard body lures....or 10 big tiger squid from the same place in June...

Well the alarm went off at 3.30am like a kick in the head after 2 hours of sleep.... Anyway got to the ramp at 3.55 and launched at Dohles Rocks, first trailer at the ramp....was 4 others by the time I undid the mooring rope off the pontoon....geez theres some crazy fishos out there!! Headed to my live bait spot looking for live prawns...tide was too high to be good but persisted for about 20 casts....11 prawns and about 6 mullet and 1 herring. Run out to Queens Beach for the first of two drifts there for 2 grinners and 1 snapper about 45...sent it back. Relocated to around the Woody Point green zone and spot locked next to a rubble patch. Well I did see three bites on livies....all 3 were cod with their distinctive power walk for 3 metres into their bedrooms and parting my leader.....15lb just is not cutting it today. Eventually the rest of the live baits were annoyed to death by micro bream like a plague of mosquitos eating me jack fishing. Flicking placcies about I managed another 45cm snapp and sent it home too. Spent the next hour side scanning wide of the green zone marking rock bottoms...will investigate those at a later date. Side scanning did not show any fish yesterday...that doesn't mean much though....looking for structure mainly. Interestingly down scan did show a healthy thermocline the more I entered Bramble Bay...I should have traced that a bit instead of looking for more structure. Water quality was ok, normally a tad greener, still has a hint of fresh out there.

No probs here...

Very nice bit of kit Greg.

Do the exercises in full time Brian, don't cut corners and you will beat the vertigo......most ppl rush the positions because of nausea.....ignore that and you will be fine. My wife gets it every year or two.....she cuts corners and the manouvres do not work as they should so she sucks the vertigo for u to about a fortnight each time.

I actively target the neap and smaller tides each month for the Bris River...especially around the deeper locations or the lights. Means I do not need to used 45 gram jigheads in some places...

Good stuff!!

just an old test photo from 2011....82cm from the Pine.

Do we have a token for March? I am off for a snapper session in the morning.

Poling luderick....good to hear. As a kid in the 70's I did the same with a bamboo pole for bream at Deepwater Bend on the Pine. Just proof that you should not cast out when standing on a rock wall...the fish are actually within three metres of you. I advise people to fish the rock walls unweighted regularly....yet they still anchor their baits in the channel desert....just as much luck there of hooking a camel. I imagine someone will read this thread and try with a graphite blank soon....

90mm flick baits on 1/4oz jigheads worked fine today.

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.