The Mad Hughesy

I used to try and fish everything, at any time. It took me awhile, but I realised this doesn't really work that well. As I've gotten older, I've narrowed my species, and hence my gear to suit.
I fish:
boat offshore> summer=pelagics, winter= bottom fish
boat bay> squire, whiting, mackerel, sandcrabs
boat estuary> flathead, cod, prawns, mudcrabs
Out of these, a few I'm still very much learning, others I'm quite confident in. For me, it's about recognising patterns and achieving what I set out to catch, always learning.

Product: Shimano Sienna 1000fd
Type: Spinning reel
Colour Range: depends on ago
Preferred Colour Thus Far:
Price: $49.95
Quality: Great with maintenance like all reels
Action:
Experience: for a cheap entry level reel, it is awesome. I've caught multiple sharks (some at the 1m mark), Jew, rays, bream, bass, flathead, snapper, the list goes on. All caught on a 1000 sized reel. Cannot beat bang for buck, great reel to start off on for a variety of species. Used it with bait, hard bodies, soft plastics.
Pictures:

so i wonder how that goes in terms of identifying the age of a fish purely on its size....

No such thing. As we all know they stop growing at 58.5cm

What a weapon, I'm sure it will land some quality fish. 

ive always found them to be a lazy fighting fish for their size, great shark bait though

Hi all.
So I just got my car back from the shop, after burning a MASSIVE hole in my bank account. With Christmas coming I decided to limit my spending, which meant no big trips to land based spots around SEQ, and staying home. However the fishing craving never subsides... the addiction is too strong...
SATURDAY
I had never tried the closest body of water to my house being Enoggera Creek behind the RBWH, so I decided to give it a crack with some bread on light bream gear after seeing some of @curranboy99's posts up at Kedron Brook. So a shout out to him, as without his post I wouldn't have a report to post, thanks mate.
I walked down yesterday afternoon with a loaf of white and gear in hand, to the the spot just under the Lutwyche Road foot bridge. I decided to aim for structure, hoping for some bream.
Rather than using a float set up, I decided to option for a weightless single hook setup instead. I was using my new Stradic 1000HG, Gloomis DRS820 GLX, Sunline Super PE 8 braid in 6lb with a meter of 12lb leader tied on with my altered slim beauty knot, and a size 4 Penetrator hook. 
The tide runs slowly this far up the system, and it was halfway through the run-out tide. I used the crust of the white bread to burley up the water, then compressed pieces of the white center into a small ball, hid the hook inside the bait, and threw out in with the burley.
At first there was no action, until a few minutes later a heap of bait were fighting over the burley. From what I saw it was small mullet, and maybe some small herring, but I can not be sure. So i decided to throw in just behind the bait, in the hope some larger fish were in behind, trying to have a crack at the live bait.
Within a few seconds of my bread hitting the water, it was hit pretty hard, and the fish ran out to the middle of the creek. It didn't get far, as my setup is a litter overpowered for the smaller fish species, but very fun with the right drag settings. I ended up landing a very healthy catfish. After 4 more, I called up my brother-in-law to come down from our place to have a crack as well. Over the next few hours we ending up going through the whole loaf, and landing roughly 15 catfish. While not a desirable fish, it was still a very fun session in the rain. i believe the biggest one for the day went 38cm.
SUNDAY
After a successful session the day before, my brother-in-law decided to step it up and get some pilchards. So around 9.00am we headed down to the same spot again, this time aiming to fish the last of the run-in tide. With a small bag of frozen pilchards and a couple pieces of bread, we decided to use all the bread first to see if we could find the catfish again first. This time however, my brother-in-law after two casts with bread, produced two very healthy BREAM!. His first was not legal, however the second went 28cm strong. This got me excited as I love chasing bream on light gear, however all I could produce was another 5 catfish. 
After the bread was gone, we swapped to cubing up the pilchards into 1.5 cm chunks, hiding the hook in the flesh around the back-bone, and casting in on the same rig setup. After only landing 2 catfish between us in about an hour, we deiced to move further upstream to a pedestrian bridge near the dog park at Downy Park. We used the same setup however targeting deeper water surrounded by mangroves, hoping for something more toothier.
First cast in, and straight away I get a hit and weight on the line. At first I thought it was a big catty, but as it surfaced we were shocked to see a decent sized FLATHEAD! I was very appreciative of my decision to not go ultra light at this point... 
After my initial shock, I quickly realised I couldn't lift this girl up to the bridge we were standing on, so while keeping her head in the water (VERY important with flatties), I swam her over towards the bank on the Windsor side of the foot-bridge and landed her, JUST. As I got her out of the water, the leader snapped.... After a quick pick myself, and a local walking past who caught all of the action, I decided not to eat her and we let her go. I very rarely keep fish, however now and then I will keep the odd tailor or Flathead as I love the gamy flesh. Today I decided against it, mainly because I didn't know how healthy the ecosystem is in the river, and I don't want to take a bigger breading female and predator out of the system. I'm all for sustainability.
After this not much happened. In the next 2 hours the tide stopped and turned, and still nothing. Using the last of the pilchard we had just cut up, I ended up getting one more catfish, and then to my surprise, a decent sized TAILOR!!
Again I was shocked, but this one I think would had just been shy of legal size, so i decided to try pole it up to where we were standing on the bridge. However this time the leader did not hold up, and it snapped as I watched the tailor swim away to fight another day.
Sorry for the lack of photos, it was raining mostly all weekend and I only had my phone so I did not want to get it too wet. All in all a good weekend. I was left in disbelief as after catching 4 different species and a couple legal fish, left me thinking I may have to seriously reconsider why I travel hundreds of kilometers in the search of fish, when such a fun time can be had literally a couple hundred meters from my house.
Thanks for reading.
 

Product: Shimano Sienna 1000fd
Type: Spinning reel
Colour Range: depends on ago
Preferred Colour Thus Far:
Price: $49.95
Quality: Great with maintenance like all reels
Action:
Experience: for a cheap entry level reel, it is awesome. I've caught multiple sharks (some at the 1m mark), Jew, rays, bream, bass, flathead, snapper, the list goes on. All caught on a 1000 sized reel. Cannot beat bang for buck, great reel to start off on for a variety of species. Used it with bait, hard bodies, soft plastics.
Pictures:

Product: Shimano Sienna 1000fd
Type: Spinning reel
Colour Range: depends on ago
Preferred Colour Thus Far:
Price: $49.95
Quality: Great with maintenance like all reels
Action:
Experience: for a cheap entry level reel, it is awesome. I've caught multiple sharks (some at the 1m mark), Jew, rays, bream, bass, flathead, snapper, the list goes on. All caught on a 1000 sized reel. Cannot beat bang for buck, great reel to start off on for a variety of species. Used it with bait, hard bodies, soft plastics.
Pictures:

Product: Shimano Sienna 1000fd
Type: Spinning reel
Colour Range: depends on ago
Preferred Colour Thus Far:
Price: $49.95
Quality: Great with maintenance like all reels
Action:
Experience: for a cheap entry level reel, it is awesome. I've caught multiple sharks (some at the 1m mark), Jew, rays, bream, bass, flathead, snapper, the list goes on. All caught on a 1000 sized reel. Cannot beat bang for buck, great reel to start off on for a variety of species. Used it with bait, hard bodies, soft plastics.
Pictures:

Brothers GPS was playing up so no exact distance. I will probably work out a rough distance travelled.

Yeah we got a few small school mackerel. One was big enough for dinner. Small tailor were in absolute crazy numbers tho. All mackerel caught on halco twisty slugs

Just to let everyone know, went out to the mile marker and back (launch from nudgee beach) and used only 12L

I'm very happy with that

Just to let everyone know, went out to the mile marker and back (launch from nudgee beach) and used only 12L

I'm very happy with that

Just to let everyone know, went out to the mile marker and back (launch from nudgee beach) and used only 12L

I'm very happy with that

mate my fuel gauge reads half by the time I get out to the cape... just always make sure i have another 20 or 40L in reserve to make sure I get home! If you said your boat used 10L/hr on average (which it probably doesn\'t), it\'s about 12-13nm from the port boat ramp to the outer measured mile marker. In good weather you will be doing 15-18kn no worries meaning you will be out there in under 1 hr, maybe burning 8-9L in the process. With 55L on board you have oodles and oodles to do some running around, maybe throw a few molotofs about, play with your flame thrower for a bit and then shoot home.

Probably a good idea to do a consumption run - one way is to get a stopwatch on the boat, drive it around for an hour flat out and then fill the tank back up, work out how much it used in an hour. Try it in smooth water, rough water, with 2 people, with 4 people, at different speeds etc. You get an average that way. Other way to do it is L/km or L/nm - if you have a GPS drop a track and then get the distance of that track, work out how much fuel was used to cover that distance.

For my trip on sunday I will have enough fuel on board for 6 hours running time at full noise, allowing 2hrs out, 1 hr moving about out there, 2 hrs back, with 1 hr to spare. This is based on the average consumption of 17L/hr then adding a 2L/hr saftey margain just to be sure. When planning longer trips it is good to know your average consumption.