The Mad Hughesy

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

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

Fish were everywhere yesterday but only found a school at knock off time .
Introduced another new angler to the beauty of NPD
Couple of trophys plus few more close to 50cm
Left them biting with a total of 150 bass and one yella plus a couple of buckets of redclaw.
Cheers
Ray
 

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

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…

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 

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

what a fascinating process, looking forward to the results

Update: we’ve let the otoliths dry out for three weeks or so, and blocked them (one of each species) in polyester resin. The drying makes the rings more obvious. The reason we block them is so we can cut a section through the centre of the otolith with a low speed saw without crushing the otolith material.

Two more weeks for the resin to harden then we will cut the sections. I’ll put some pics up of the rest of the process. 
 

Great report @christophagus glad to hear you ticked Moreton off your bucket list. 
As @DropBear mentioned they are great to eat. Just new to cut the blood line out. 
 

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

crushing it! no jew show there heads while chasing the threadies?

yep, fluid for me too

yep, fluid for me too

Ciga is a risk right along the East Coast as fish like Spanish migrate.
Theres been ciga poisoning cases right down to Sydney
 

Good on you for trying to organise anyway Brian.
ive got it in my head to organise a kayak social in the future. Just a one day thing followed by a bbq as I know a lot of folk on here have kayaks.

Good on you for trying to organise anyway Brian.
ive got it in my head to organise a kayak social in the future. Just a one day thing followed by a bbq as I know a lot of folk on here have kayaks.

Good on you for trying to organise anyway Brian.
ive got it in my head to organise a kayak social in the future. Just a one day thing followed by a bbq as I know a lot of folk on here have kayaks.

Good on you for trying to organise anyway Brian.
ive got it in my head to organise a kayak social in the future. Just a one day thing followed by a bbq as I know a lot of folk on here have kayaks.