The Mad Hughesy

bowmouth guitar fish or shovel nose? bowmouth Gutair fish are a odd looking creature but very very cool none the less (below) and grow fairly large @thatsafishystory

thanks @fishingnut will do mate

Hey team has anyone ever seen or used a transom mount trolling motor as a bow mount? (Pic below) im thinking of setting it up on my boat like this. Mainly because of the rails and placement of the anchor. I’d imagine it wouldn’t be as easy to use as a foot pedal controlled model....but that doesn’t bother me all that much. pics below are of my boat currently, and some pics I found on google of the setup I’m talking about

having never crossed a bar yet (on my to do list) i dont think any are safe as such, more comes down to the weather and conditions. for example, i saw the bar between caloundra and bribie the other day was flat as a fresh water lake. Yet other days ive seen the VMR boats struggle to make it out. My suggestion would be to read as much info as you can, then attempt it with another boat on standby just in case things go bad.

ive seen these used before...no need to worry about trying to stab the fish to get it up. Just lower it down, guide the fish into it and start pulling.

I used to be part of a few car club forums too, they have all but died off. the age of forums seems to be slowly declining having said that...i find i get a much larger overview of fishing reports etc by being a part of facebook groups, not to say this forum isnt great. i find this forum to be a much friendlier and close nit group of people...which is why i wont leave! i think the Facebook groups are just a different way of sharing information compared to forum websites. both have their for and against. i know a lot of people are against Facebook and think its the devil, but like most things on the internet...you get out what you put in. I know there is a facebook page for this forum, but is there a group?

on a separate note, i tried to log the details of the tagged bass i caught...not in the suntag system. thats disappointing edit: i take that back, yes it was. had grown 7mm in 6 months

Great day out, thanks again Ray. after many trips out to the dam, I finally popped my yellow belly cherry!

thats te second time in as many days that ive heard good things about this lure. Might have to grab a pack

fantastic. Might even bake up a fresh batch of brownies for the boat to bring with me

gday Ray, id love to come on out again with you if the spot is still available?

haha you cheeky bugger valid point though. otherwise 20 northsiders could catch a 24cm bream each which would beat one 40cm southside bream. So im thinking the best fish from each side is counted, that way its not about the number of fish caught and still about the best fish caught.

that rings a bell in my head too, ill try that next time i go down there

the thought crossed my mind as i watching Game 1. Given ive missed the first game, i might adapt it to a single round, but as you suggested for a longer period. Also toying with the idea of a different scoring system. So rather than the "biggest" of any category, have some sort of scoring system for every species caught. that way, everyone can contribute to their "teams" total. Still trying to figure out the best way to run that.

i had that same issue last year, still yet to crack the secret. Ive heard of blokes throwing spears at them in the shallows!

waiting for the barrage of abuse now... neither, it was an exploring mission to see if they had showed up yet. might try and grab a couple tomorrow for dinner this weekend

Went for a quick session after work in the passage. Managed two small tiger squid in 1.5hrs. Very picturesque spot to fish on sunset too, love a QLD winter spotted a monster arrow squid but couldn’t tempt it to bite. Just out of curiosity, when spotlighting them, is it best to keep the torch light not directly on them? I’ve found that when I keep the light on them, that they tend to shy away quickly

that was my favourite lure for a long time nice set of flatties mate

what a fascinating process, looking forward to the results

well done to catch that bone fish, im sure many folk would be envious of that! thanks for the report

ive been out a few times in my own boat where im convinced i will sell it as soon as i get back to shore, it is an evil sickness. I now force down breakfast and have a travelcalm (blue one) which really helps me out alot

The weather according to Willy weather was a bit of rain with very minimal wind on Saturday morning. Given it was a long weekend, I thought most people would write Saturday off and give either Sunday or Monday a go. We arrived at the Scarborough boat ramp which already had quite a few cars and trailers already parked up. Hit the water and off to the measured mile to see if anything was about. It was at this stage we knew good old reliable willy weather was wrong…the bay was sloppy and much windier than predicted, but we pushed on. A few drifts resulted in nothing at the mile so I set course for the 4 beacons. We drifted past every beacon multiple times for no fish, nothing on the sounder either. Having no experience at this location, maybe they fish better if you anchor up there? I’ve read reports of people catching cobia, snapper and kingfish here as well as the usual pelagics. Guess I’ll have to go back and try next time! In my planning for the trip, id also read that the tuna will show up anywhere in the channel that runs along the inside of Moreton. So, we headed in closer to the island cruising in the main channel and bam, the first school of tuna turned up. First cast and im hooked up, only a small mack tuna which we kept as shark bait for later on. About 30 mins later we found another school hitting the surface, by the time we got within casting distance, they were gone. But I remember reading a while ago that if the tuna go down after you get to them, just let your lure sink to the bottom then crank it back…which worked this time! Another slightly bigger Mack tuna was boated then released. Just goes to show, that properly researching your target species can really be vital. We then just cruised along the channel in between the 4 beacons and Tangalooma watching for any surface activity. Ended up chasing another 10+ bust ups throughout the morning for no luck. We decided to anchor up near a beacon and put the shark bait out (half a tuna). Didn’t take long before the reel was screaming, but it wasn’t to be… 5 minutes into the fight we dropped whatever it was…bugger. Given the bite marks on it, id call it as a bull shark (cutting marks on one side and puncture marks on the other side) After retrieving the bait for inspection, we had a local come say hello. We threw out half of the tuna for him which he smashed then swam away. A few minutes later, he was back and just sitting 5m behind the boat as if to say…”is that all? im still hungry”. He must have been one of the dolphins that visits Tangalooma as it was very tame. We were able to get some cool clips of the dolphin taking the tuna under the water. 0D91D2E1-C196-4D73-8D31-4B78B6996CDD.MOV89D713FE-57D1-442E-9099-A5EE76CC0E02.MOV On the horizon we could see the rain rolling in, so we decided to give the other half of tuna to the dolphin and steam on home (that and every time we tried to float the bait out he would play with it). Funnily enough, the bay was flatter on the way home, only taking 32 minutes to get from Moreton to the boat harbour. All in all, a semi successful first trip to Moreton. Since being a little kid, I’ve always wanted to take my boat over to Moreton, which I can tick off the bucket list now. Probably could have picked a better day to do it, but it was a blessing in disguise really. Now I have much greater confidence in my boat’s abilities to handle poor weather! Until next time…

Benjamin Button bass

thanks for the tip mate

great trip away by the looks, some quality fish too. Just shows that picking through the smaller stuff will eventually pay off with a solid fish.