Neil Stratford

Epic effort , and great read . I think Kat may be right , sounds like you may have kept and cooked up an empty crab. Look underneath the crab for a dark chocolate or golden colouration , this usually means they’re full. Be careful though, the full crabs are really strong and more difficult to handle. The ones which are shiny white beneath and very clean looking are usually empty and poor eating. Good to see you got out and had some fun . At least you got away with all your fingers and toes intact. Great effort !!

Donkey of a fish , well done.

Hi Kat , yep pretty much it - catch what you see on the screen a few times and take a grey matter note of it and then you’re your confident in what to look for in the future. regards Neil

Make sure you go over to Woralie creek on the Western side of the island , best to visit on an easterly wind. It’s one nice place to have lunch !

Yep that last week in August looks good. I was eying that week off But ,As a couple of my mates have work commitments I’ll be settling for the Ekka public holiday and ten days after that.I’ll post a report as to how I go , that way you’ll have an idea where the fish are - or aren’t. regards Neil

Have a look at the tides and time your trip around what you plan to do up there. Ie there’s no use in getting to the barge at 7.00am with a big high tide at 8am.iIf the tides dropping you can easily follow it up and down the beach but if it’s half way in and rising it’s hard going in some places. I always go up there around mid August and there’s always lots of tailor to be had then. Ideally if your fishing and not touring the island ,if you can jag a week before the new moon in mid to late August ,with low tide at about 4am , no weed , a light westerly wind you should get plenty of what your afterwith a few quality ones thrown in.When conditions are good the tailor bite all day , these were caught mid morning on 85g Raider lures mid August last year . regards Neil

Hi Kat I’m often asked how to differentiate fish species on the sounder. I guess it comes with experience and learning your specific sounder and changing its setup as to what your chasing. I’m very lucky to have 2 boats the small one has a Lowrance HDS 7 even though this unit has down and side imaging I like to use the standard sonar ,but in saying that , I often overlay the down image over the top of the std sonar image this tends to give a little dimension to the bottom structure in sonar mode. ie Feeding Bass show as a series of thin red lines , almost zig zagging all over the place in a horizontal plain. Non feeding Bass show as just your plan ordinary fish red arch or a Inverted v shape. When they are like this sometimes they are very had to catch as they are not active. i always change my sounder to freshwater mode and shallow water mode in the dams. The Threadfin have huge swim bladders and more often than not are found in packs of about 6 or sometimes more close to the bottom - so look for huge big red arches approx a metre off the bottom in groups of about 4 or more. Mulloway are similar -big red arches but are often up off the bottom but usually in the bottom 1/2 of the water column .They will often rise higher if there’s bait in the water. I have a larger boat with Furuno FCV 588 -even though this sounder does not have down or side imaging its a very good instrument and is my preferred sounder over an old lowrance unit also in the boat. When I fish for Spanish mackerel I look for big red flatter type arches stacked vertically one on top of each other usually found near big schools of bait or around structure like reef edges . When in Accufish mode , It puts a circle and measurement like this “ ️ 1200 “Around each individual fish ,and I’ve then set it to buzz an alarm if it detects fish ranging from 750 to 1800mm . This is very effective locating Spanish mackerel . When I go fishing for snapper offshore say in 80m of water it shows snapper as red arches and pearl perch as blue blobs. A good sounder is a very handy tool, but spending a lot of time setting it up adjusting filters etc and learning how to use and interpret what your looking at will pay big dividends long term . I hope this has helped a little . Regards Neil

With “Ray The Bass King” still laid up , Decky Grant still towelling off after falling over board last week and Number 1 son cancelling on me to do a Spanish mackerel trip , I enjoyed the solitude of a couple solo trips in the salt water this weekend . Friday was spent siting on anchor down towards the Pin enticing a few quality whiting into the esky. Got about 10 or so on bought cribb island worms without putting in too much effort. Saturday afternoon was the 2nd outing .I put in more effort this time and cast net a dozen mullet for live bait . Then spent a good 1/2 hour sounding around down at the mouth of the Brissy River till I found some Threadys . I spot locked on top of them and hooked up pretty well straight away . Things didn’t feel quite right and sure enough up came a bull shark. I cut him off after a short tussle allowing it go and bother someone else. I could still see the threadies under me on the sounder ,but I had to wait a couple of hours till the tide started to slow up before I got my next bite. In typical thready style it had some big blistering runs with plenty of big head shakes before surfacing next to the boat. Happy with getting a half decent one and because it took me so long to get that one bite, I packed up and went in . Attached are a couple of photos of my spoils. regards BeastMaster

Took my mate Mark down to Hinze Dam yesterday to help him catch his first bass . With the rain about we decided to delay our start by an hour or so till the radar started to clear. Right on que ,as we turned off the highway at Nerang we looked up to see the cloud up in the mountain clearing nicely to a nice day. A quick check of the shrimp traps procured more than enough shrimp to entice a few bass out of the timber and allow Mark to get a taste of bass fishing . I thought the plan had come together nicely with Marks rod buckled over on his first cast ,but alas a healthy Tandan was soon in the net . Mark then had to wait for me to show him how it was done for a while till he managed a nice bass. Well done Mark .After exhausting our shrimp supply , We returned to the ramp just on noon with 30 bass on the tally board.

Yes I’ve told the said Deckie that I’ll invest in a boarding ladder on the condition that he stops eating my Chocolate Tim Tams Ray has had his operation , although a little sore he is in fine spirits ( probably wishes he had a bottle of spirits under his pillow I recon ) He s currently counting down the days till he can go for a bass fish again.

With Decky Ray laid up for a while , I thought I’d do his weekly round up of Hinze dam this week. With a very a late start ie Friday instead of Wednesday , new decky Grant and myself rolled into Hinze at about 6.30am this morning . Straight out to check the shrimp traps, we loaded up on what ended up to be exactly the correct number to feed the local grunter population and a few bass up until midday. We struggled to find a decent school of fish for the first few hours of spot trying - just pulling 4 or 5 then they having them go off the bite. At about 10.30am we stumbled across a bottom blanketed with Bass and pulled a quick 20 or so before the unexpected happened - Decky Grant decided to follow a released fish back into the murky depths of the dam - he went straight over the side with a half pike entry , and resurfaced less his sunglasses, hat , and rod , but as luck had it , (well I recon it was luck ), he’d managed to somehow hook himself in the finger . I saw this and quickly said - don’t move mate , give your hand and I’ll pull the hook out and save your rod .Sure enough , I pulled the hook out of his finger and pulled in his rod . By this stage the fun had just begun . Grant is about 6 ‘6 “ and of very solid statue , and just could not muster enough strength to lift himself out over the gunnel of the boat .I got him to stand on the skeg of the motor and I lifted him on the hydrolic trim and tilt so he could get upon the stern . His hat floated up , and away so we went off and collected that and returned back to our spot to catch a few more bass before running out of bait. For the sake of the report - Grant later reported that the water was beautiful ! We ended up with 40 odd bass and a wet Decky. Regards The Ring Master, I mean the BeastMaster.

Took a well earned rest from “bassing “with Ray today . Hooked up the big boat at 3.30am ,collected my son at Bribie at 4.15am and proceeded north to the Sunshine Coast along with what seemed every other boat in SE Qld . Target species were Spanish Mackerel and they didn’t disappoint . We found some bait with Spanish on it well away from the crowd just on sunrise , quickly deployed 2 troll baits and picked up 2 Spanish for the ice box ice in a couple of minutes. This bit of action resulted in quickly being inundated by other keen fishermen. We voted on a tactical move to let the hoards scare the crap out of that school and we went looking elsewhere . After moving a km or so we found some more and put another 3 in the esky and headed home . 5 hits - 5 fish no shark issues. Very tidy day with some quality fish 12 to 18 kg each. Qld Fisheries officer collecting the carcasses for research at 7am Monday morning . regards BeastMaster

Looks like you all had a great day on the dam ! keep up the good work Captain K. Regards Beast Master

Great day out Ray , thanks for coming along . regards Neil

First day we got a lot fish about 3 km south of the Maheno , then we had to move because the weed moved in . We then found a small weed free hole up near Red Canyon .This hole produced good fish all week as it stayed weed free. My advice would be look for a clear blue gutter opening out to sea. I’ll use the tailor as troll baits for Spanish mackerel a little later in the year.

Hi Neil here , I’m a newbie to this forum and this is my first post. Hopefully it works out . Just returned from my annual camping trip to Fraser Island .Apart from a shower of rain late one nite , we endured some glorious weather conditions.The beach was extremely flat and a great drive on the way up the beach , but was a little soft at Hook Point on the way home .The northerly wind deposited plenty of snot weed on all the beaches , but we always managed to find some gutters which were close enough to weed free. The Tailor were pretty well laid on for the entire trip with no need to get up too early or fish into the night.I pulled 2 dozen tailor on pilchards the first morning , then reverted to a 85g Raider for the rest of the trip. The fish were pretty good quality with the big Raider producing fish in the 40 to 50cm class - no big fish but just good solid ones.. I tagged and released 50 odd tailor for the trip and brought home some for troll baits and a couple of fresh fillets , It’ll be interesting to see where the tagged fish turn up next . Anyways - Got my Tailor Fix for 2020 bring on 2021

Well done Ray , good to see you had some joy with the shrimp traps. I’ll give you a call when I’m back from Fraser Island and I’ll take you down to Hinze for a fishin’ mission . Regards Neil