Hi all,
I'm on school holidays now, so I've finally be able to do a bit of fishing. This report will be about my sessions on Saturday and Sunday. I was going to go today as well but I need to pack for a trip to Yeppoon so decided ( it was decided for me ) that I would stay home today.
The first session I woke up decently early and got the train and ferry to the spot. Annoyingly, as I got off the ferry, one of the wheels on my cart busted off, which meant I had to carry it about 800 metres to the spot. I then got to cast netting, but after no luck except one lone herring in my new net I met with Michael. He showed me a few more spots to throw the net, and here we got some mullet and other baitfish - enough to start fishing. It was very quiet at first, but after an hour or so of fishing Michael had a big run on his rod. He set the hook and was onto a decent fish with plenty of headshakes and a couple littles runs. We were pleased to see a solid GT come up, so I netted it and pulled it up. This spot has a lot of structure so it makes sense a trevally was hanging out there. It was about 45cm, and he decided to keep it for lunch.
Michael's trev
After that, we were hopeful for some more bites, but apart from a few small nibbles it was really quiet. As the tide continued to run out, we threw our nets around for some more mullet and herring. Unfortunately, both of our aerators weren't working, so some of our livies became dead bait pretty quickly. It was pretty cloudy that day, so it wasn't too hot sitting and waiting for the bites. After another two hours or so of hardly getting a touch, we cooked some lunch up. The trevally was very nice, a bit like a tailor, so it was a good decision to keep that for a meal. Since my cart had also broken, we tried to melt the plastic around the wheel plus some cable ties to seal it back together. Annoyingly, this didn't really work, and after a test with the cast net inside it broke. We continued to fish around midday and into the arvo, but the fish weren't biting. We eventually had a few nibbles on whiting and herring with one small run on my rod, but no more fish were hooked for the day - we decided to go fishing the next day before leaving.
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 7:00AM High, 1:50PM, .6M, Low
Moon Phase: About 80%, increasing, a fair bit of run
Bait Caught and Used: Live Mullet, herring, bony bream, silver biddies, winter whiting
Fish Caught: One trevally for Michael, none for me
Tackle and Gear Used: I used one rod, a Shimano Aero 6000 Baitrunner with 30 pound J-Braid on a Kmart rod. The rig was about a rods length of leader to a size 4 star sinker, swivel, about 70cm of trace, then a 6/o Owner circle hook.
Air Pressure: 1006
Humidity: 67%
Overall Success Rate: 30% - cool to see a trevally
The next session wasn't any more productive, and was at a different spot the following morning. I met up with Charlie and we drove there, and got our lines in at about 6:30AM. I started cast netting, and bait was tough to come by - it took about 30 throws before I even got a couple of herring. I threw these out anyways, but apart from some pickers there were no decent fish around. Eventually, Michael got a big Christmas tree, which would last us the whole day fishing. Following this, Charlie had a few bites on his rod before hooking up to a fish. After a few decent headshakes, he had a bream on the jetty of about 29CM. He chucked this back, and got another herring out in hope of another fish. It wasn't long before Michael was on too, and he pulled out a slightly larger 31CM or so bream. He kept this, and we got back to fishing. There were definitely lots of bream about, and the pickers were quite bad. We ran out of our live herring pretty quick, so resorted to using the ones that had died as we were struggling to catch any more at all.
The bite stayed quiet, and it seemed there were no decent fish swimming about. I managed to get a couple more live herring which I chucked out, but they each lasted about 45 minutes before dying/getting pickered, which isn't really a good sign. I had to head off at about 12:30PM to do something in the arvo, so after having some lunch, and getting no more good bites except a couple of lone runs or picks, we decided to call it a day and head home. I was using a small duffel bag on wheels as my cart and it worked well enough, but next time a normal one would be better.
Here's the stats of the trip. I wish I went fishing today but hopefully they're chewing in the river when I'm back from Yeppoon.
Tide: 7:40AM, 2.3M, High, 2:20PM, .7M, Low
Moon Phase: 87%, increasing. Once again, a fair bit of run (not heaps though).
Bait Caught and Used: Herring, a few deadbaits from the prior session
Fish Caught: Two bream and a catfish for the others
Tackle and Gear Used: I used my Shimano Aero 6000 on a Kmart Rod with 30 pound jbraid and 30 pound leader, Charlie used my Abu Garcia Ambassadeur on an Ugly Stik with 20 pound braid and 30 pound leader. We both used size 4 star sinkers, swivels, and 6/o circle hooks.
Humidity: 70%
Air Pressure: 1007
Overall Success Rate: 20% - two sessions and two donuts for me
Anyways, thanks for reading, hopefully I'll catch something next time or at Yeppoon!
Cheers Hamish
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