Ed.

Thank you, two more sleeps and off to 1770, so hope the fishing is better there.

Pics all good now.

Nope, can't see them either, just code.

I did a heap of snorkeling/spearfishing/scuba diving when I was a teenager, now that I am much older and life has caught up to me, I now only rarely go snorkeling unfortunately. But I do know what you mean, we used to swim around and see heaps of fish and the fishermen were all on the piers with their lines in the water and the fish would just ignore all the baits. So we just got a feed with our spear guns and also collected all their snagged jigs from the bottom.

Yep, it was one of the nicest (calmest) days I have had out there for many years.

I made a typo, it was the Eastern side not the western side that I was fishing.

Mostly the eastern side, after that headed over to the Tangalooma area, and we were intending to go over the Hutchinsons Reef so the missus could look for whales but the wind was picking up so decided against it . I was regretting not bringing the snorkeling gear with me as the water around Cowan Cowan was really clean and would have liked to have gone for a swim.

Well what a wonderful day it was on the bay, headed out from Bribie Island in almost glassed out conditions, and got to Mud island about 45 minutes later, sounded around and heaps of bait fish but nothing bigger, put some larger hooks on and all I got was pick, pick, pick, switched to smaller hooks and one after another, pulled up little fish, fusiliers etc. about 20cm long, but they were gut hooking themselves so switched to bigger hooks again, even used one as live bait , spotted what looked like a couple of Longtail tuna about 100m away from me, didn't get a good look as they only were at the surface for a second or two and then disappeared, by the time I pulled the anchor and rigged up a couple of lures, they were gone. Tried trolling for a while and also changed locations several times but to no avail, so headed up to the northern part of the bay and ended up at Cowen Cowen and by that stage stage nothing was biting so did a few laps around some of the markers there and about an hour later headed back, so no fish but a really nice day out there! Did heaps of miles but to no avail. Still it was a magic day out there. No idea what this particular fish was, that one almost managed to get that hook into its mouth. It had a really long second dorsal ray, you can just barely make it out by the shadow on the rag, the others were small Fusiliers and they were suicidal on the smaller hooks hence the reason for going to larger hooks.

Hi Swampie, welcome to the forum. Ed.

Nah missed those, sorry must have been asleep, no, wait that was you!

Have a great trip, remember no photo's and it didn't happen. Cheers Ed.

If I can talk the missus into it, we will hopefully be heading south around 8ish from Bribie Island to the Mud Island area on Monday. Seems that the weather may be playing ball again and coincides with the first day of holidays for the missus. I want to take the boat for a trial spin as we will be heading up to Agnes Waters the following week, so just want to make sure that there are no more gremlins lurking in my boat before heading North. Are there any areas around there that are worth fishing for for snapper, macks, tuna etc. I have never fished that area before so don't know what to expect. Anyone else going there on Monday?

I would be considering the option to upgrade to a spot lock version, admittedly I haven't used one but from what I have seen on their use they would be brilliant. In my opinion they would be worth the extra dollars. Also would be worth checking out the thrust capacity of the one offered as with most "deals" they offer the cheapest options but not necessarily good options. However if it is a used package then you won't get any upgrade options. So weigh up the cost of upgrades to get a functional good working boat compared to a more expensive one with more bells and whistles. The cheapest one is not always the best in the long run, especially if you think it may require an engine replacement in the near future.

Thank you, definitely haven't had time for fishing, still have to do maintenance on the house before we go ( we live on two acres ) so cutting the grass, clearing, etc., does takes its toll in time and effort, I was hoping to take the boat out for a test drive before we head up north but due to my wife's work commitments and the windy weather, it doesn't look like I will be able to. Anyway it should be good, looking forward to going up there, last time I towed my 26ft boat to Rosyln Bay it died the next morning on the way out to get fuel to go fishing, faulty computer chip, had to come back without fishing as it would take 6 weeks for a replacement to arrive. So hoping there will be no more jinxes to worry about apart from the weather that is and aim to put some fish on ice to take back home.

I just hope the wind dies down by the time we get there, as that will put a real dampener on fishing if we can't get out, because that will restrict us to the inlet. Been doing a lot of work to the boat getting it ready, got the motor fixed, put a new extra battery in and wired it up to a two way switch, made some extra heavy battery cables for both, added an extra bilge pump in at the front of the boat, made an extra fuel tank. Redid the bottom of the seats and lastly replaced the live bait tank pickup pump and added a float switch, replaced one wheel bearing and checked the others, replaced two of my canopy cover fittings as they had cracked. Built a Burley tube and now just need to get my fishing gear together. So pretty much did all the maintenance, and hopefully the boat won't play up otherwise I will not be a happy chappy, but at the end of the day can't do anything about the weather!

So looking at these restrictions, they shouldn't affect GregOug going to Frazer or myself going to Agnes Water then. Or have I missed something?

I haven't heard anything about them, what are the new restrictions?

GregOug, PM sent

Hi Greg, if you have a castable overhead reel, I have an 2 piece 13 foot 10-15kg 85-225gram casting weight overhead surf rod you can borrow when you go on your trip up to Frazer. Cheers Ed.

The Covid-19 test is a swab up the nose and when they did mine it sort of tickled so no biggie, when my wife got hers done it hurt a little bit, so I guess it just depends on the person and their experience with giving you the test.

First off, I would be putting my rods away on the floor and not in the rod holders, nothing like a good graphite rod pointing towards the sky to act as a lightning attractant.

Provided the old AGM battery stays at the higher voltage I will be happy, it currently is 12.9V after 10 hours from when I picked it up and I am not sure when they disconnected it from their charger, so I may have lucked in.

Just an update, I managed to increase the voltage on my charger, only needed some extra wire on the secondary side, fortunately there was an little bit of spare secondary wire sticking out the back of the transformer and so I just pushed it through the transformer, rearranged a few things in there because of the now shorter wire stickout and now it is up to 15V unloaded. That saved me from totally unwinding it and putting in a longer piece of wire. Now will just watch what voltage the AGM battery will drop down to over the next few days. Keeping fingers crossed.

Just got my battery back from Autobarn where I asked them to charge it up for me overnight on their chargers which are better than the store bought one which I got 15 years ago and is the one I normally use to top charge it, tested when I got home and the battery voltage is higher than I ever managed before, I will see how much the voltage naturally drops after a day or so, if it stays high I will modify a battery charger which I made a few years ago and put an extra turn or two on the transformer to give me a higher voltage as both only seem to go to 13.5V so will aim for 14.6 or 15V. The charger I made can put out 20A has a better output which is better than the 8A one I bought from the store. But it is not a smart charger so will have to watch it whilst charging and maybe charge the battery in two sessions. So looks like my old battery may still have some life left in it and will use re-purpose it as the second battery, provided I can keep top charging it up at a higher Voltage and it keeps it's charge. I will pick up some heavy battery cable on Monday and see if I can find some room in the boat for it. It is another 35Kg weight I will be adding to the boat though. Probably will add a pair of 50A Anderson plugs to it in case I want to connect a fridge freezer to it. The boat already has a 2 battery switch in it so hopefully that may make life simpler and safer.

What days are you going to be up there as we (my wife and I) will also be up there from the 4th. Sept.?