GregN70

I really like Schoolie Mackerel, used to catch plenty from anywhere around the Bribie blinker, out to the Bird Cage, 4 Beacons etc. Good fighters, good to eat, what's not to like.

However now that I live and fish out of Yeppoon, these are no longer really an option for me, i've managed to get just one of a few years of trying.

Can't wait to move back to Brisbane/SEQ area for the fantastic fishing there.

1 hour ago, Hweebe said:

For Tailor I make a cut under the gills to bleed and snap the necks (quick kill / stop more blood being pumped around) 

The neck snap is a cleaner (less bloody) way to maintain the eating qualities.

Thanks, I don't really catch anything these days, so I don't really have to worry that much. If I want to eat fish I have to go buy it.

2 hours ago, Neil Stratford said:

I bleed the tailor by simply breaking their necks to improve their eating quality. 
 

That’s what I thought, but there’s no major blood vessels there. 

37 minutes ago, Neil Stratford said:

Went for a trip down to the Jumpinpin area this morning with my brother.It was a cracker of a morning , with just a slight westerly blowing.

The flathead we’re on fire , we keep 3 nice eating sized ones , and would have released approx 30 others. Plenty of double hook ups , at one stage my brother got 5 in 5 casts and I managed 3 from 3 at the same time. Also brought home a nice  by catch feed of tailor that took a likely to our plastics. 
We just wedged the boat up against a tree on  the bank in about 6inches of water and picked them off basically one after the other on plastics as they moved down a tiny channel in front of us. 
Interestingly whilst we were parked up , we saw 3 different boats  check the same crab pot. 2 of them had yellow stickers on the sides. Don’t know who actually owned it , maybe none of them?…
 

Why do you snap the fishes necks like that?

Jump on YouTube and look up Old Fart Fishing, he's got a lot of vids catching fish in the creeks and river around mackay, should give you a few tips as to spots, plenty of landmarks to go off etc

Oh nice Bob9863, crabbing in Northern NSW was like that too. The biggest crabs ive ever seen, and very abundant. Especially Wooli River. 2kg Bucks, 20cm across the back were the norm, not the exception.

1 hour ago, Bob9863 said:

A funny thing about Basa, that's, another name for Mekong giant catfish. 

In their home countries they are treated as a sport fish and nobody really eats them any more. 

 

My family love seafood. So we eat a lot of Basa. I probably but 1kg per week. Sometimes hoki as well when on special.

When we lived in Brisbane & NSW, I used to get a stacks of crabs, both sandys and muddies. The family, got used to a good feed of crabs once a month or so.

But up here in this Yeppoon area, there are very few crabs anywhere. Sand crabs are super rare, and mud crabs aren't much better.

We now keep a crab feed to a once a year special when I buy 3 or so from the FishO for easter or Christmas. Really miss the great crabs of Toorbul & Donnybrook, it's just to easy to get a feed there.

50 minutes ago, Hweebe said:

 

Depression - tell me more this, was it directly from not catching fish or were there also other factors at play before your diagnosis?

 

 

 

Before I moved to Central Queensland, I lived in Adelaide, Nth NSW & Brisbane area. Fishing from a young age, I had exceptional success in those areas, always catching amazing fish, winning fishing club awards, photos in fishing mags, fish in the freezer always etc. Then when I moved to Yeppoon it was like a tap was turned off, I could not catch anything. I started to throw more time and money at it thinking I just need to learn more about this spot, go further, use a better sounder, and go every day off I have etc. But that didn't help either, 2 nice boats in the shed brimming with technology and gear, 100kms offshore hunting for new untouched grounds, upset wife as i was hardly ever home on the weekend. Over a couple of years of doing this with only maybe 2 or 3 legal fish on the board, i started to doubt myself, I started to feel cursed, i started to feel useless and that it was just me that was useless. I ended up just giving up on the fishing and started just drinking and staring at my boats in disgust. I broke a few rods in anger and frustration and yelled a lot, had a cry.

Went to the doctors, got diagnosed with depression, got on some meds and did some cognitive behaviour therapy. Changed my thinking, I got back into fishing about 18 months ago, I do like you say, I go boating, take the wife and daughter now. I still don't really catch anything, but I can handle those negative aspects or Cons much better and try not take it to heart anymore like i did. Eventually one day I might catch some good fish consistently. That mostly involves moving to a better fishing area, which will happen in the next couple of years hopefully. Until then I will go boating and if i catch something great, if not it's also great.

1 hour ago, Tuna are fish said:

First reason why i fish, For the adrenaline rush, there's only one thing that i have found that is close to the adrenaline rush from the first tuna of the day.

Second reason: i can just forget about everything and zoneout in the peace and quiet.

Nice, I guess a tuna would do that.

Can't seem to say i get that adrenaline with 250mm long catfish.

For me these are pros and cons,

Pros

 - Get away from the house and chores

- Get to play with my toys, Fishing gear and Boats

- Spend time with family & mates

Cons

- It's a very very expensive hobby, big distances and lots of fuel to get to less abused spots

- Never any fish to catch, everywhere is already fished out

- Never any crabs left, everywhere is all crabbed out

- Can be very boring spending long hours on the water for not even a bite

- The family get cranky when we do a full day on the water and still have to buy frozen fish (Basa) for dinner from Coles

- One of my biggest cons is depression, developed from years of catching nothing I was diagnosed with depression and required medication.

I'd give that area a miss altogether, it's very hard to find any fish around there. I'd go further north to the Whitsundays, or even Cardell.

Pike Eel, they love canals after dark,

51 minutes ago, Bob9863 said:

Ah, that's the same stuff I use when sanitising home brew gear. 

 

That's the stuff.

If you catch your own prawns and want to stop them going black quickly, dip them in a solution of that, and drain before packing.

1 hour ago, Bob9863 said:

It makes little sense, if the farmed prawns sold to people have white spot, then the ones in the water definitely do too. 

I'd say it has more to do with shops selling imported prawns as Australian prawns, but as dodgy as the big two are when it comes to price fixing they are usually pretty good with local produce. 

But what could they do to bait prawns that would make them any less likely to have white spot then the fit for human consumption ones? 

Bait Prawns are dipped in solution of Sodium metabisulfite Na₂S₂O_5.

Sodium met-b is used extensively as a disinfectant, anti-microbial & fungicide. In bait prawns it prevents the heads turning black and is widely used by bait shops and bait suppliers alike.

It can be a hard thing to do, I wish you well. Sadly my kids have almost grown up now, and despite my best efforts they hate fishing. Boy (12) & Girl (16) both describe it as "Boring", I feel kinda sad, thinking if only I brought them up in a better fishing area like the Gold Coast or Coffs where they could have caught some decent fish and gotten excited about bent rods and screaming drags like I did growing up near Bribie Island/Moreton Bay. My fault as due to my work I brought them up at Yeppoon with only undersized cod, tiny bream and the ever-present & always unwanted catfish their only fishy experiences to date. I can see why they got bored. I'm bored too.

On 22/04/2022 at 7:17 PM, snap1946 said:

try windy

https://www.windy.com/-Weather-radar-radar?radar,-27.981,153.554,12

Windy can be quite useful. However it is solely drive by deterministic model outputs with no forecasting adjustments/skil made by forecasters locally, the models used in Windy are, ECMWF (European), ICON (Korean), GFS (USA) and ACCESS (BOM), the exact same models as used by the BOM for their official forecasts,  also the free version of Windy is only updated 12 hourly (unless its changed recently), rather than 6 hourly when the model runs are conducted, which means it can be a bit out of date by the time a new run is about to be uploaded. Check Times and Runs.

13 minutes ago, jon said:

I drive multiple times a year 7and a half hours north towing a boat to fish the Capricorn coast reefs because the fishing is just that good. 

Yeah right, I don’t believe you. 
i thibk it’s absolutely crap here 

4 minutes ago, AUS-BNE-FISHO said:

Thanks Greg. No, not really. I fished mostly everyday all day, but I wouldn’t say I had to put in a whole lot of effort to find the fish.

Cheers Hamish

All day every day?

There's not much more effort to give than that.

On 17/04/2022 at 6:02 AM, Junky said:

Nice fish Hamish.

Great species to tick off the list, and at that size it is definitely one to remember. 

 

And @GregN70says there are no fish at Yeppoon. 

Southsiders don't seem to have a problem catching them. 

 

 

Nice, catch. That's more than i've caught here in 4 years.

Must have put some huge hours in to find all them ?

Nice catch there mate, certainly a lot better that what I can get off Yeppoon.

I used to chase dart, bream and bonefish off the beach at Fraser Is. The surf made it tough, with loose line loops around your feet, but a stripping basket is worth using. I never got a bonefish but plenty of big dart,

23 minutes ago, kmcrosby78 said:

Yep I feel for you living near a huge river system that has had netting banned and is full of large Barra, threadies , etc …

Don't believe everything you see on FB, the only thing it's full of is mud, old cars & tall stories.

There's probably only 3 places i'd say best to avoid.

Gladstone, Rockhampton, Yeppoon.  Very bad areas.

Hi Ed. I've found that the better fishing is always south. The further south the more the marine biomass.