Neil Stratford

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