AUS-BNE-FISHO

It is with a heavy heart that I tell the tale of a long lasting friendship that ended on Friday.
It was about 1982 I was introduced to GT270 and we became inseparable for nearly 43 years.
I dressed it up with all the nicest of accompaniments over those years and it served me well with many fine encounters of being triumphant.
Sadly on Friday it threw a tanty with the grinners around Mud...what a terrible way to go....topped itself about shoulder height is a most unexpected way...what a disgraceful way to go after being such a champion for so many decades.
Now standing in the corner with all the other dis-used, abused and broken, like a naughty child told to stand in the corner facing the wall....not a whimper at all.
Thank you Mr SnyderGlas for creating my prototype friend, he was an outstanding comrade for so very long.
My initial thoughts were disbelief and a hollow sense that grows within....thoughts of finding a suitable replacement to fill the void and then the realisation that nothing else could fulfill the spot in the rack.
To be honest, i don't think I could develop that amount of trust into something I could buy today...pure graphite just does not have the personality or the toughness of glass and graphite blends.
Anyway, enough of the dwelling on loss and time to regale the stories from Friday....6am launch....live baits by 6.15am....Mud at 6.25am.....Bloody bastard grinners within seconds ad they didn't stop.
So After several spot changes I found ourselves well east of Mud on a rubble patch i had not previously encountered in 12m of water. 1st cast was a small squire, then a few grinners....retie the leader and cast out again only to feel another grinner on the bait....ripped the bait away from it harshly and BANG...huge hit and peeled 30 odd metres from the reel then all became slack...reeled it in to find a lot of grinner teeth marks on the last 40mm of leader...dirty little shytes.
Oh well....came back to the rock wall and the water was filthy so went to the tripods for a quick look..not much there but in crossing the channel i spotted a school of jew so spent the next 30 minutes trying to coax some interest out of them....I left them sleeping and quietly motored away, defeated once more.
Into the river!!!!  I don't know why i got excited then, the high light was the biggest flounder I have caught in 30 years, and a couple of jumbo bream in the kilo class....snapper flathead and jew we encountered were all wearing nappies....
I ended the day with a leisurely drive from Pinkenba to Petrie that took 1.45 hours in the Friday afternoon Gateway traffic....so relaxing indeed.

Apart from that, It's also the fact that when the tide changes, the water rips through there, if you jumped or fell in on a outgoing tide you would end up miles from the shore and with the ingoing, you would end up in between Urangan and Fraser Island, with no chance of swimming back to shore, it is very strong. There actually is an emergency ladder about 3/4's of the way out to the end of the jetty on the right hand side which goes onto on the sand, just on where outer sand bar starts, but if you ended up in the water you would not be able to make it to even climb up.
You can see where the current rips through and has left the sand bars.
 
 

When I was very young I use to go to Watsons Bay in Sydney to see the shark weigh in every Sunday. It was a part of life in those days.
Turned me off sharks forever. Never caught one & don't want to.
I remember I was on holidays at Kierra Beach ( QLD ) riding my surfboard.
30 minutes later a fisherman caught a hammer head off the beach.
Cheers.

I was camping at Blakesleys a couple of weeks ago. We had crab pots out front of the camp in 4 or 5 metres of water. When we collected them in the morning a massive tiger followed them all up and even knocked a couple right beside the boat. It was at least 500mm across the head and we estimated at least 3 metres long. Very big animal. Needless to say we decided against the morning swim. 

Hahaha. 
My kids were out there at Easter and asking why noone was jetty jumping. 
They thought it was because there were no stairs to get back up onto the jetty. 
I explained that there is no stairs because the authorities do not want people swimming there due to the shark population. 
 
 
 
My PB sighting of a tiger was on the other side of Fraser, out on the Gardiner banks. 
He's a local out there I'm told, and he would be up around, possibly over the 5m mark.
I'll never forget the size of that huge blacked out eye as he glided effortlessly under the boat about 10m down. 
It was a 5.5m boat and this thing was just as long. 
 
They're like mobile reef systems with the amount of fish that hang off them. 

Hi All.
Got sick of my GP telling me I can't go fishing.
Rang my Specialist earlier in the week. I saw her yesterday. All clear to go in a week's time.
After that I decided to buy some new lures. I have heaps, but a few more will not matter.
I ended up looking at surf rods.
I picked up a Storm  Gomoku 13ft 3pce 12-20kg rod. Nice rod. I have read some good reports on these rods. They have a Penn Prevail blank. Retail $209.00.
I went home did some more research. 13ft would be great for the beach. These rods cast big lures. I don't need 12-20kg rating. But you never know. The rod weighs 12lbs.
When I caught some Kingie's recently my 10ft 8-12kg rod struggled a bit.
Found one on the Net for $170.00.
Cheers.

You can also swap the treble out for an assist hook. 
 
If they're not skittish you can drop your slug out the back in free spool while on the move.
Do a big arc around them, pull up, then just rip the slug back through the middle of them. Only seem to work if they're not skittish though, which is hardly ever. 

Yesterday I had to wait for my car to be fixed at Urangan Hervey bay, and had some time to kill so went for a walk to the jetty as I haven't been there for a while. Talking to the locals near the end, and apparently there has been a very large Tiger shark hanging around there for a couple of days. One of the locals saw it relatively close up and said it was about 4m long and about 1m wide across. It was going for a mackerel he had in the water and had to yank it up quickly.
My first thought was I should get my 50W out and have a go later that night but then reality set in, what would I do if I was even managed to hook it? The Urangan jetty isn't really set up to release big fish, there is a lot of height under the jetty and trying to maneuver such a large shark to the start of the jetty and onto the sand would be next to impossible as it is over 1km away.  So gave up on that idea as it would be too futile.
No doubt plenty of guys will try to target it but don't think anybody will succeed, they will need a very large reel and the biggest I saw there was a TLD25 so not even in the running, even a 50W is probably way too small especially from the a jetty, will keep my ears open if it hits the news 😁.

You could easily paddle to coochie on the yak. 
Urban legends have people walking over there at low tide. 
Red beacon area on the NE side of coochie is worth a look.  
 
 
Bass in eprapah Creek, next to movie theatre. There's also a few ticks in there as well. Check yourself over after a visit. 
You could launch a kayak down the end of beverage road. 
There are jacks in there. Also big cod and a big groper.  Caught a few of its grand kids, but no chance turning it. Very pretty fish when juvenile though. 
Massive green zone at the mouth of eprapah Creek so be careful there. 

 
I've pinched this map from beacon to beacon. If you don't have a copy then... Here's a copy
 
 

At least you got some fish for all the effort you put in Andrew. 

At least you got some fish for all the effort you put in Andrew. 

Still a good effort @Andrew_P considering the conditions, and yes, it seems whoever did the bay forecast was smoking that exact same weed, it was pretty average out there early until around 8am, then it came good.

Messenger_creation_505901d5-bb53-45b8-90c8-bb45c6e26e58.mp4    

caught a few solid macks, and a longy around 90ish on a 15g gillies slug thats now been retired lol. They can definetely handle the tuna as long as you dont go all out on them. I had locked up the drag on my 4k trying to get that longy away from the sharks. Did get it up unscathed but the split ring was hanging on by the balls haha.

Got a good feed of one of the best fish on the plate, so worth the trip.
We too were tricked by the forecasters. I headed out to Harry's with son Mitch. He got seasick after getting smoked twice by very good fish. Launched about 4.30, returned to ramp at 7.15 wet, shaken, and cold. Met @Another Wazza out there too. He battled on in the conditions.
How far out did you go to get a Pearly ?

Had today booked for a rare fishing trip with my brother in Yewgary after seeing the forecast earlier in the week. We kept a close eye on the forecast sites particularly BOM MetEye which showed very fishable conditions. Woke early and checked the observations. Wind, swell and a few showers but with the forecast promising we decided to go. 
well we punched out 1/4 the way there and it was gross. BOM totally smoking the reefer! We changed plans and stayed in close drifting some broken ground, waiting for the weather to improve. 
things were slow for me but my brother managed a fish on each of the first 3 drifts. I picked up a small grassy on drift 4 and then we decided to inch out a bit deeper. Well it was windier and rougher as expected and I wasn’t feeling great. Been crook a couple of times at work on boats but this was next level! Still managed to fish and got smoked out here before picking up another 2 grassies. Next drift my bro changed lures and got an instant hookup on a freight train - straight into the reef! Bruised battered and busted up we called it a day. Limped home with our tails banged up to our ears and a few fish in the box. Got back on dry land and the sea sickness remained. Battled the nausea home and into bed with a bucket, woke up 4 hours later with a cracking headache, aches and pains and still feeling like praying to the porcelain pisser!

3 of us went to the western arm this morning the shrimp traps were a little light on as it is 5 weeks since we were there. We headed upstream to a few spots around the entrance of bass bay. The fish were moving around in waves and we managed 20 bass with the largest being only 40cm and the majority just over legal and one tandanus. Had to move twice because the barred grunter were stealing our bait but we got our own back on some of them and fed them to the eagles. Back at the ramp at 10.30 due to lack of bait.

I was suppose to go mackerel /reefy yesterday morning ,but my mate who was taking me in his boat cancelled with a sore shoulder at the last moment  . Since I had that all important leave pass organised  ,I went and dug a few  worms and had a whiting fish last night . Could not find any decent ones , but scratched up a nice feed of whiting. Got a beautiful little  juvenile mulloway  and a little lizard as by catch , which were tagged and released .Managed to upgrade team south’s whiting slightly.
whiting 350 ,345,350mm
mulloway 405mm
flathead 385mm

Hi all,
I was on a holiday down in Victoria for a week (went for one fish for trout but no luck) and got back last Thursday around midnight. Decided to have a rest on Friday but Saturday morning @Cavvy and I tried a spot on our kayak. We launched at about 5am and arrived at the spot by quarter past, just before the sun rose. We spent the next four hours flicking some shallow diving hardbodies around but unfortunately, we did not catch any threadfin. There was plenty of bait jumping but I guess the fish weren't hungry, so we will have to get them next time. 
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 9:30AM, .6M, Low. 
Moon Phase: 25%
Lures Used: Zerek Pyra and Megabass Oneten R
Air Pressure: 1015
Humidity: 83%
Overall Success Rate: 30% - first session on the river this holidays
The next session was today with @Thorbjorn Hale at The Port, on Thorbjorn's tinny. We launched at around 9am from a very crowded POB boat ramp, and after we got away first thing on the agenda was catching some livies. It wasn't long before we had a fair few mullets gathered so we went out to the wharves and started fishing. 
It was awesome weather, and it was quite flat for as far as I could see. On my first cast my live mullet remained untouched for a fair amount of time before line started screaming off of my reel. Thorbjorn picked up my rod while I wound in my soft vibe and the fish took a good run. I started the fight and the fish was taking some decent runs and had some good headshakes. It wasn't long before I had a nice 60cm or so snapper on the deck of the boat, which we were both happy with (and I was regretting not buying some ice for the esky). After a quick photo we released the snapper and got lines back out. 

Snap
Following this, we each caught a decent sized stingray, but after that the bite went very quiet, so we decided to go and chase some livies at the Poo Chute and try again. We were successful with the herring (despite my substandard cast netting), but back at the spot we couldn't lose a bait, apart from Thorbjorn catching a small shovelly. We moved again, and at this spot we each pulled in a catty, which wasn't a great sign. As we were moving though, we noticed a boat was hooked up to a decent fish. We waited until we saw it, and sure enough the gold of a thready emerged, so it was good to see someone was having some success on the soft vibes. 
We chased a bit more live bait which was fun and had a quick rest before anchoring on the edge of the main channel around the Clara Rock area. Unfortunately for us, this didn't equate to any fish, and the only action was a few nibbles and plenty of waves from the Moreton Island boats. At about five, we decided to call it quits and we drove home. Overall, it was a great day with the weather staying flat for basically the entire day, thanks again for taking me out Thorbjorn!
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 8:15AM, .9M, Low, 1:35Pm, 1.6M, High, 7:15PM, .8M, Low. 
Moon Phase: 35%
Bait Used/Caught: Live mullet, herring, whiting, prawn, silver biddy, anchovy
Fish Caught: Snapper, catfish, shovelnose, stingray
Lures Used: Soft vibes 
Air Pressure: 1015-1017
Humidity: 64%-81%
Overall Success Rate: 75% - fun day out with a few bites and a new PB snap for me. 
Anyway, thanks for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed the report. 
Cheers, Hamish. 🙂 

Hope next week is better Rebel and that you can get back to the fishing soon.

Nice snapper Hamish, well done 👍. Bet you'll take some ice next time ...... 🤣

Hi all,
I was on a holiday down in Victoria for a week (went for one fish for trout but no luck) and got back last Thursday around midnight. Decided to have a rest on Friday but Saturday morning @Cavvy and I tried a spot on our kayak. We launched at about 5am and arrived at the spot by quarter past, just before the sun rose. We spent the next four hours flicking some shallow diving hardbodies around but unfortunately, we did not catch any threadfin. There was plenty of bait jumping but I guess the fish weren't hungry, so we will have to get them next time. 
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 9:30AM, .6M, Low. 
Moon Phase: 25%
Lures Used: Zerek Pyra and Megabass Oneten R
Air Pressure: 1015
Humidity: 83%
Overall Success Rate: 30% - first session on the river this holidays
The next session was today with @Thorbjorn Hale at The Port, on Thorbjorn's tinny. We launched at around 9am from a very crowded POB boat ramp, and after we got away first thing on the agenda was catching some livies. It wasn't long before we had a fair few mullets gathered so we went out to the wharves and started fishing. 
It was awesome weather, and it was quite flat for as far as I could see. On my first cast my live mullet remained untouched for a fair amount of time before line started screaming off of my reel. Thorbjorn picked up my rod while I wound in my soft vibe and the fish took a good run. I started the fight and the fish was taking some decent runs and had some good headshakes. It wasn't long before I had a nice 60cm or so snapper on the deck of the boat, which we were both happy with (and I was regretting not buying some ice for the esky). After a quick photo we released the snapper and got lines back out. 

Snap
Following this, we each caught a decent sized stingray, but after that the bite went very quiet, so we decided to go and chase some livies at the Poo Chute and try again. We were successful with the herring (despite my substandard cast netting), but back at the spot we couldn't lose a bait, apart from Thorbjorn catching a small shovelly. We moved again, and at this spot we each pulled in a catty, which wasn't a great sign. As we were moving though, we noticed a boat was hooked up to a decent fish. We waited until we saw it, and sure enough the gold of a thready emerged, so it was good to see someone was having some success on the soft vibes. 
We chased a bit more live bait which was fun and had a quick rest before anchoring on the edge of the main channel around the Clara Rock area. Unfortunately for us, this didn't equate to any fish, and the only action was a few nibbles and plenty of waves from the Moreton Island boats. At about five, we decided to call it quits and we drove home. Overall, it was a great day with the weather staying flat for basically the entire day, thanks again for taking me out Thorbjorn!
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 8:15AM, .9M, Low, 1:35Pm, 1.6M, High, 7:15PM, .8M, Low. 
Moon Phase: 35%
Bait Used/Caught: Live mullet, herring, whiting, prawn, silver biddy, anchovy
Fish Caught: Snapper, catfish, shovelnose, stingray
Lures Used: Soft vibes 
Air Pressure: 1015-1017
Humidity: 64%-81%
Overall Success Rate: 75% - fun day out with a few bites and a new PB snap for me. 
Anyway, thanks for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed the report. 
Cheers, Hamish. 🙂 

Hope next week is better Rebel and that you can get back to the fishing soon.

My preference in rods is outdated now....fibreglass...specifically a Snyderglass JS1029W extended about 14 inches, paired with a Abu 10,000ca reel with 30lb mono. Can deadlift 50lbs with the rod so swinging big snapper and average jew up onto the ledge is doable.
The spin setup was a Sabre Grafast blank about 9 feet and rated to 12kg....ran 10kg on a TSS4 to spin up the macks and tuna from the stones.
The rods might be super heavy compared to todays graphite rods, but they take the abuse and knocks very well and ask for more.
These days I would upgrade the reels but still use the same rods.....probably opt for braid backing, 5m of hollow braid and 20m of mono leader finger trapped in the hollow.
There is a tradeoff in the reels too.....high gearing is good for getting the speedsters on the line, but less so when you need to winch them in at times....overhead I would probably not exceed 6:1, spin 7:1.

Hi all,
I was on a holiday down in Victoria for a week (went for one fish for trout but no luck) and got back last Thursday around midnight. Decided to have a rest on Friday but Saturday morning @Cavvy and I tried a spot on our kayak. We launched at about 5am and arrived at the spot by quarter past, just before the sun rose. We spent the next four hours flicking some shallow diving hardbodies around but unfortunately, we did not catch any threadfin. There was plenty of bait jumping but I guess the fish weren't hungry, so we will have to get them next time. 
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 9:30AM, .6M, Low. 
Moon Phase: 25%
Lures Used: Zerek Pyra and Megabass Oneten R
Air Pressure: 1015
Humidity: 83%
Overall Success Rate: 30% - first session on the river this holidays
The next session was today with @Thorbjorn Hale at The Port, on Thorbjorn's tinny. We launched at around 9am from a very crowded POB boat ramp, and after we got away first thing on the agenda was catching some livies. It wasn't long before we had a fair few mullets gathered so we went out to the wharves and started fishing. 
It was awesome weather, and it was quite flat for as far as I could see. On my first cast my live mullet remained untouched for a fair amount of time before line started screaming off of my reel. Thorbjorn picked up my rod while I wound in my soft vibe and the fish took a good run. I started the fight and the fish was taking some decent runs and had some good headshakes. It wasn't long before I had a nice 60cm or so snapper on the deck of the boat, which we were both happy with (and I was regretting not buying some ice for the esky). After a quick photo we released the snapper and got lines back out. 

Snap
Following this, we each caught a decent sized stingray, but after that the bite went very quiet, so we decided to go and chase some livies at the Poo Chute and try again. We were successful with the herring (despite my substandard cast netting), but back at the spot we couldn't lose a bait, apart from Thorbjorn catching a small shovelly. We moved again, and at this spot we each pulled in a catty, which wasn't a great sign. As we were moving though, we noticed a boat was hooked up to a decent fish. We waited until we saw it, and sure enough the gold of a thready emerged, so it was good to see someone was having some success on the soft vibes. 
We chased a bit more live bait which was fun and had a quick rest before anchoring on the edge of the main channel around the Clara Rock area. Unfortunately for us, this didn't equate to any fish, and the only action was a few nibbles and plenty of waves from the Moreton Island boats. At about five, we decided to call it quits and we drove home. Overall, it was a great day with the weather staying flat for basically the entire day, thanks again for taking me out Thorbjorn!
Stats of Trip:
Tide: 8:15AM, .9M, Low, 1:35Pm, 1.6M, High, 7:15PM, .8M, Low. 
Moon Phase: 35%
Bait Used/Caught: Live mullet, herring, whiting, prawn, silver biddy, anchovy
Fish Caught: Snapper, catfish, shovelnose, stingray
Lures Used: Soft vibes 
Air Pressure: 1015-1017
Humidity: 64%-81%
Overall Success Rate: 75% - fun day out with a few bites and a new PB snap for me. 
Anyway, thanks for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed the report. 
Cheers, Hamish. 🙂