Ed.

It has been many decades since I cut up a Wobbegong to eat but from what I remember, I think it was easier to push the knife under the skin and then cut outwards so that you are not trying to cut into the shark. To me, Wobbegongs did not taste too bad. We used to get quite a few in the craypots.

Looks like everyone is bored then?

And it shows!

Hey Hweebe, I have sent you a PM.

Thanks Kat, basically anything that was tempted to take my bait, such as Trevally or Mackerel. Ray's weren't on my preferred list but it was still fun, even a decent shark would have been nice. It has been a very long time since I hooked a fish so needed the practice, so better to practice on and lose a ray than a decent fish .

Hey Hweebe, don't know how it fishes lately as that was the first time I wet a line there in many years and especially not in Winter. In case you don't know the area, in Hervey Bay there are huge flat shallow areas of sandbars, the jetty crosses 2 of those sandbars which become dry at low tide, the resultant channels cause a very strong tidal run between them, the bait fish congregate around the jetty as it is about the only big structure in the area and it is over 800m long which ends in deeper water. The predators such as the Sharks, Kingfish,Trevally and Mackerel patrol those areas. As the jetty juts out from a land point the wind gets funneled up between the mainland and Fraser Island from the Tin Can Bay area and then over it. Because it sticks out so far in to the bay there is no protection there, heading west towards Point Vernon along the shoreline, it is also shallow and has huge flats which contain soldier crabs and other sand critters, no vegetation as such just sand with some silt, there are the usual suspects there such as Whiting and rays. Apparently Trevally also visit that area, although I haven't seen any there, but most of them seem to prefer the Jetty, probably because in normal times there are huge schools of bait fish there. There are a couple of smaller groins/jettys to the west of Urangan which are more protected from the prevailing southerly winds but haven't heard of anyone getting big catches of anything there, just isolated Bream and Whiting here and there. In summer the wind is quite welcome as it cools you down, in winter however not so enjoyable. If someone is after larger fish and land based then the jetty is probably the place to go. Hence the reason there are a lot of local fishermen at the end of the jetty ballooning for the bities.

Well I finally got to go fishing for a few hours, Missus left me on my own as she went down to Brisbane for a night, so I decided to scrounge up some fishing gear and head down to the Urangan Jetty and do what the locals do. Quite a few people fishing there but most left when the temp dropped down, the wind was about 20 knots so pretty savage wind chill, not much being caught there at the moment although a couple of Spotted/School(?) Mackerel were caught yesterday. Did the usual and jigged up a few livies but nothing bit them, as one of the baits had died, I filleted it and put a side on a hook and sent it to the bottom. It seemed to be twitching ever so slightly so I thought I would strike and see if there was anything at the other end. Sure enough there was, and it started to peel off line against 8kg of drag, but it did it in a strange sort of way. I suspect it was a ray of some type and after a few minutes, it busted off my 60lb leader. I was using my Fathom FTH15LD2 on a custom 2m rod, my terminal rig had a 50cm steel trace from a J hook to a swivel and then 60lb mono from the 40lb braid mainline to that swivel, when I pulled it up, the rest of the rig was gone and the mono have several cuts on it, so I think it's tail barb had hit the line and sliced it. It's all sand there, so no rocks to do any damage. Still it was fun for a few minutes, left about 30minutes after that as the wind chill was freezing my backside off, as it was approaching low tide and the sun was setting it wasn't going to get any warmer so a nice hot shower at home was next on the list.

Looking forward to some heat, so much for global warming! Haven't heard of any Tailor where I am, but I am in the Bay so might be a different story on Fraser.

Personally I think for reasonable sized mackerel and such, you would probably want to have at least 300+ meters of whatever line class you use, if using mono line, then the bigger size would be better, if using braid plus mono topshot, then the 8000-14000 size should have you covered, however flicking lures/jigs on a larger sized/heavier reel will wear you down quicker after a while, also depends on your physical build too. I knew a guy up at Dampier/Karattha (W.A) who used to target 20-30kg mackerel using 4-6kg line on smallish Shimano Calcutter 400's, to me that would be a lot of work chasing them and not my cup of tea if you know what I mean, I would prefer to apply a bit of brute force and get them to the boat quicker to beat the sharks, and they release better too, light tackle knackers them too much so when you finally release them they are more vulnerable to sharks if they already didn't get chewed up. So if I was you, I would go to a shop and get the guys to put a reel on a rod to see how it feels in your hand, it would give you an idea on how it would cast and also if it would wear you out quickly or not. In the Saragosa range, there doesn't seem to be that much difference from what I can tell between the 8000 and 14000 size. About 35gm from lightest to heaviest and obviously more line capacity in the larger sizes. I have never used the Saragosa's so can't tell you anything about them. I did buy a Penn SSV6500LL from a guy from Cooktown and he caught heaps of Mackerel up there in the 20-30kg range on it from a boat, and that reel fits between the 8000 and 10000 size Saragosa's. This is just my opinion. Cheers Ed.

Hi Ellicat, Time yes, inclination no, freezing my backside off up here, but to tell the truth, I go to the jetty with the missus one or two times a week for a look and there are only a few baitfish around since those wet weather/storms were here, it is improving and the water has cleared up a bit, but after chatting to the locals, it appears that there is still very little being caught on the jetty. So not enough to entice me to go out and spend several hours on that cold windy jetty for almost no reward. Plenty of small Toadfish and a few Grinners about though. It has being really windy up here, on average, most days are nice here (about 19-22C) but as soon as the sun starts going down it drops dramatically (about 6-12C), talk about your wind chill factor! I guess I have turned in to a fair weather fisherman or a sook (or both)! In the final stages of building design but still 1-2 months to go before work starts on the block that we bought, house plans drawn up but still working on septic design, have started to look at aircon and solar but have about 5-7 months to organise those as those don't need to be finalised till the roof is on. The building process is so slow up here with limited builders available for a lot of development going on in this area. Our builder will be back from holidays in the next week or so and should be able to submit our plans to him to get a quote. Hopefully we will still be able to afford to build the house we want and not scale down any further due to massive building cost increases. End of Sept. we are doing a road trip to Airlie Beach and Cairns for a week in each (if all goes to plan) so definitely will be taking the fishing gear, by that time of year it should be warmer. Yay! Don't know why, but I am really feeling the chill this year. You guys must be feeling it down south as well no doubt, but at least you are still going fishing. Cheers Ed.

Sounds like you all had fun, your smile says it all.

A couple of large spools of strong hand lines with spoons/lures for mackerel and tuna, very cheap, simple and effective, to trail behind the boat when travelling on the ocean. Plus a few bait jigs in different sizes. Probably be good to also get 1 or 2 lighter rod setups as well. Ugly's are quite resilient and they can usually fit multiple line classes too.

Get your self a pair of waders! or do what Greg said above.

Happiness is a new motor smell!

Well done, should be quite an adventure.

We also had 12.5C during the day at Hervey Bay, way too cold for this area. At least the sun is shining again today and no rain so far.

You've got a chainsaw, get them from someone else.

Make sure it is a right handed hammer and not a leftie.

Yep, it does make it a bit harder to identify when they are different colours, just couldn't see any of the bands on that one.

Don't think it is a Chinaman rock cod, had a quick look online and most of the images that come up show them as having vertical orangery / brownish wide bands on the body, that one looks a bit like one of the wrasse family to me.

Thanks will do.

Fair enough! Will have to visit if we ever come up your way to do some gold fossicking.

Have you thought about getting off acreage and moving towards the coast and closer to a large town, plenty of places where you can get a 1/2 to 1 acre block, milder temperature and more infrastructure?

Your way up North aren't you?

So how edible are they?