Fishing Reports Info

This was Paul's post on one of the fishing forums.

"Been chomping at the bit for the last few weeks to get out for a fish. Yesterday was the first fishable day for weeks so I jumped at the chance to get out with Smithy and my mate Rick.

Had a lazy 6am start and headed out looking for some Spottie Mackerel working bait schools on the surface. We found birds working pretty quickly which signposted the action. Smithy deftly got us alongside the boil and first throw of the slug I was on! But they weren't spotties, instead mac tuna. Still they were really good fun on my light 20lb outfit. We boated 3 or 4 but the school was finnicky and was only surfacing every few minutes and sometimes only for a couple of seconds before they moved on.

I've been pretty keen to get onto some Kings or AJs vertical jigging so we headed wide to give it a go. I learned that it's hard work in deep water and I'm still pretty unco at it. We had no luck on the jigs so changed to livies. We marked a large school of kings on the sounder but they just weren't hungry. Even tried a big plastic but couldn't get a hit. We tried another one of Smithy's spots and again the fish were there but didn't want to play. Picked up one squire here that went about 38cm.

So we turned our attention to trolling minnows for pelagics. Nothing at the first spot but at the second spot we had a triple hookup on the minnows but two spat the hooks and the third took the whole lure. With toothy critters about we changed to trolling livies for a spaniard or wahoo.

We had several baits smashed with no hookups and then a short while later managed to boat a good spaniard.

After that we continued to just miss them, pulling in bait heads and tails but not hooking up.

We could have easily landed 5 or 6 of these spaniards but it just goes to show the difference between a good day and a great day can be a few millimetres.

Overall it was still a pretty good day on the water, nice conditions, a relaxed atmosphere on the boat and a good spaniard.

To be honest I'm counting down the days before I get back out there"

With unfishable weather up here and all tournaments run regardless the weather unless a strong wind or gale warning are current I headed to the Gold Coast to fish with Jim and Ryan McKinnon on their recently done up 233 Haines Hunter Formula Galaxy II.

Day one on the Friday we took the safe option of running the beach into Kirra bay and fishing the Kirra bait spots. We found little bits but not the mother load. From lunch on we trolled home down sea.

Day two was a better forecast and we were going heavy tackle regardless. We put the lures in at 120m and trolled all day. We saw Team Garmin and Adios fighting fish beside us and were right in the middle of the action but it didn't happen.

Day three we had heard about some slimey mackerel. We put the gear out in amongst lots of birds and it didn't take long to start marking some excellent bait. We drove off it to where another boat had just popped off a black and had our own fish on. It spat the hooks after 50-100m and we didn't get a good look at it but we were thinking billfish. A short while later both Jim and I saw a bill whack but it didn't pop the rubber band or carry on with it. By then Amigo the only game boat in the area had tagged one. We lost the bait for a while and then watched Amigo pop one off live baiting. That was enough for us so we started live baiting. Second troll up wind Ryan got this 14.8kg wahoo. It won heaviest other species light tackle for him.

We put one bait out and cleaned the deck of blood. Just as the second bait went out and we had gone about 15mins we were on again. This was a 60-70kg black marlin. We fished into overtime and ended up on 5.1kg of drag on 8kg line and eventually popped it off over the 3 hour mark and with 1.5 hours to get the wahoo back to the weigh station before the deadline.

Keely booked this one in. Live bait was hard to get but we jigged enough up in the end. 50m into trolling a spanish mackerel jumped up and hit the bait but didn't let drag off. I wound the bait in and sure there was only a head left. No further bites on the couple of mackerel reefs I tried. We went to bottom fishing but it was all rubbish and undersize stuff. The boys on the radio were onto the yellowfin tuna so we went for a look. By then a lot of boats were on them and having a centre console would have been a big advantage to get casts in closer. We heard about a school of spotties on the radio from another mate. First cast here we were on but then lost it. The bait would gather around the boat and use it for protection and we could see the spotties swimming around in front of us. Very frustrating seeing so many but they were shut down. Move off 50m and it would explode with predators again. Go back into casting range and the bait would hide back in under the boat and the action would die off. We went home with our tails between our legs.

Damian booked this one in with his two boys. We still had livies in the tank from the morning session so we gave them a try straight up. There was nothing going on so we headed to another lot of bait grounds to try for cod and cobia. First drift and one of the boys was on. We thought this was going to be it but we tried livies on every bait school I knew of in the area and nothing. By then the northerly was up pretty strong so we punched home into it.

Bruce is an old fishing contact from Dalby who was down on holidays. We picked this day as the best to take his couple of sons out. We trolled around all the bird schools in closer going for a yellowfin but didn't have any joy. We headed to the marlin grounds and jigged up some live bait. We got a few but they were hard work in the current. We trolled the billfish grounds looking for bait but it is still a desert out there.