tiotony

Actually on a butterflied herring, meant to be less attractive to live mullet eating sharks!

Not a goal but rather a hope, that being less sharks at my local. One definite goal, get a 70-80 barra to take home. They are all way over that at the moment, which go back. Sunday's effort between feeding sharks:

Lip grips so long as you can reach the waterline on those sea walls. I have one hooked to my tackle bag but never use them because these days I'm always fishing the beach. And recently definitely not a need - the beach is shark city since the floods in Cairns

This worked about 40 years ago: Pump some squirt worms and fish them at night on a fine gauge size 6 long shank, in dark and quiet areas of the river, cast just a few metres from shore. Huge whiting cruise the shallows at night, but they spook easy. If no squirt worms use pea sized soldier crabs. Day time, jig live herring at Boyds bay bridge on the ebb tide, and walk them along the rock wall with the current on a long leader = catch flathead.

I think depends on the level of difficulty of the fishing your doing. I have a fishing mate who insists on using cheap rods/ reels/ braid/ leader/ terminal tackle and consistently gets 90% less hits and loses 90% of the fish he hooks, chasing barra/ salmon/ queenies etc. I have longer casts, smoother drag, more robust leader etc. Meanwhile he outfishes me 10 to 1 up the river on the little stuff - bream, grunter etc.

Gulp shrimp and Keitech Easy Shiner for me!

to suit the bait size - 5/0 to 7/0

Entirely wind dependent - usually get the NE winds Oct-March, but over the years have seen short NE wind breaks through other months where it fires too.

Note the sideways rod action is because I'm trying to work out whether I'm under or over my other line....

Woke up this morning to the season change, after 6 months of the dry season south east trade winds "fish drought" - eased winds and a very monsoony feeling in the air. Knocked off at lunch to be positioned at the creek mouth with a live mullet when the tide started going out - one cast with the net scored a net full of mullet ranging from finger length to huge, selected a few mid size ones. Didn't take long to get a hit and what I thought was a salmon positively ID'ed itself with a tail walk: 93ffa908-ed13-4496-8150-f870ba6aa323.MP4 Mid 80's-ish fat barra which was quickly dispatched, and went home to chuck it in the freezer - plan to delight my brother in law coming from Brazil in 2 weeks, with whole baked barra: Live mullet will be a sure thing for the next 4-6 months, till the south east trades come back in to ruin the fishing again! IMG_2661 (1).mov

Have caught them in NT and a couple in Cairns, bit like a blue salmon but have no 'threads' under the head. I vaguely remember reading in a fishing book as a kid, them being called 'moreton bay tailor'?

Bream/ flathead carbonara. Fillet, cut in small pieces and cook in the carbonara sauce with Brazilian spinach. I do it with blue/ king salmon and its amazing. The portuguese ancestry in me - firm flesh fish like that I also like using for caldeirada (Portuguese fish stew). Its really easy to make - plenty recipes online.

Bit different down there because you get salmon in deep water whereas I'm fishing shallow water. But, up here king salmon (threadies for you) and grunter love live yabbies. I'm thinking if you can get yabbies, fish them on a long leader and size 2 long shank late at night - opening up big bream, whiting, grunter, salmon, jewies etc. all on the same rig.

Shame it was belly up though; don't really want or need to keep anything that big.

Sunday morning incoming tide on the beach; castnet scored half a dozen big prawns and three legal whiting - all but one whiting were blacktip and hammerhead food in quick time. Last whiting got snaffled and got a glimpse of what looked like a largish shovelnose; so was not being particularly conscientious fighting it. Finally got it close enough to see - turns out was an estimated 120-130 salmon (lost my tape measure so just a guess). Was lip hooked and I don't need something that big, but just stayed belly up trying to swim it - which we seem to get most of the time for the bigger kings on the beach, so home it came. I think they fight themselves to death because at the end of the fight they're basically dead when they hit the beach, whereas the smaller ones just swim off immediately. Big barra just swim off immediately too. Two other guys fishing; both got a king salmon over a metre straight after so there must be a few around.

Holloways. Mind you people catch mackerel landbased at Palm cove jetty every day - seeing them at Holloways is not common.

I think its big GT's spooling me Hamish; saw one the size of a car door there the other day

Just 2 queenies this morning; there was big mackerel cruising the beach making blue salmon shower so nothing biting. Was literally seeing 20kg mackerel in 50cm of water 3m from the shore

I thought they might be too, but they're very white colour rather than blue/green like frogmouth pilchards. Maybe lighter just because they are on the beach rather than estuary. Use a whole one instead of half

King salmon injury from this morning. Cast out 15-20cm anchovy thing on a 6/0 and leave 2m of slack with reel in gear and your finger on the line to feel the take. Nek minnit metre plus king salmon jumps in front of you and peels line off at 100mph.....across your finger.

Got extra conscientious this morning as the north easters came in today - left home at 445 to hit the beach at 5. Arrived to bustups everywhere; one quick castnet right at my feet had my net looking like a Christmas tree decorated with baitfish. We get huge schools of these hitting the beach in north easters - kind of look like 20cm long anchovies and the predators are always right behind them. A very busy session followed on blue salmon in the 50's hitting the bait within minutes of casting out, also a couple of undersize king salmon - lost count of how many as it was like fishing a tailor school down south. Kept 5 for a feed. Also dropped two large king salmon but meh, 5 blues are plenty for me. A guy 100m down from me was chucking all manner of hardbodies and plastics and didn't see him get a single hit - have observed over the years that for some reason lures do not do well at the beach I normally fish.

1. Attract less sharks - donated a full box of hooks to them this morning. 2. Find a reliable/ plentiful spot for live mullet. 3. Get a positive ID on whatever keeps spooling me in seconds.

Tried again this morning - reached 3 shark limit pretty quick so went home (3 sharks in a row = my measure that fishing is bad).

Living the dream!

I just do a quick tape measure to mid tail area, I don't worry about stretching the tail out to get a few more cm - I'm only measuring against my own captures. Aids a quick release too - however this one was gut hooked and was belly up when I tried to swim it, so it came home. They often don't seem to release well (neither do blue salmon) - the amount of times I've released a salmon and 10mins later washes up dead on the beach, so I just fish to a take limit rather than try and C&R salmon - one big king salmon or 2 or 3 smaller blue salmon then go home. Stopped fishing after catching this one.