Braddles
13-04-2009, 10:46 AM
My mate from Townsville arrived Wednesday night with his Seajay side console in tow... and after his 16 hour drive, we didnt waste any time rigging up the boat and heading down to comslie to have a quick session in the river..
We had planned to drop 8 crab pots the night he arrived, and keep it pretty limited to that as we didnt want to be too tired for the next 4 planned days.
Day 1 (Thurs) - Fish northern bay from 4 beacons to cape moreton including harries and check / rebait the pots on the way out and home
Day 2 (Fri) - Mud Island and check / rebait pots on way out and home
Day 3 (Sat) - Gold Coast - get some live bait around scottish princess and head to 24 fathom line for some bottom bashing. Once back at Brissy - duck out to Brisbane River to collect the pots
Day 4 (Sun) - Cabbage tree creek to Jumpin Pin area (with crab pots set around jacobs for the day only), chase prawns around powerlines and fish around the pin bar.
Day 1: With the pots dropped the night before, we headed straight to them - and from the first rise, noted some serious weight in the pot (especially with that crap thin nylon rope that burns your hands they sell with crab pots - note to self to change this today!) 4 crab pots in a line returned avergae 7 crabs per pot. (28 crabs in first string of 4). Males to females was 1:6. Legal to undersize (ignoring gender) was 1:3.5 (and jennies consistantly larger size, with almost all jennies well over legal size if they were bucks (bar 1 or 2, all undersize crabs were male) Second line of 4 some 2 klms away yeilded less overall numbers, same ratio male to females, but more keepers : undersize ratio (quality V's quantity).
Fishing planned for day 1 was aborted when we reached the mouth and started heading beyond the rock wall - to be met with howling winds, rain squals with visability so poor you couldnt see 30m in front of you, and messy just sub 1m chop from all directions - not comfortable conditions - and so we decided to stay in the river - and scored nothing but dirty cat fish after dirty cat fish! We kept some of these for crab pot baits.
Day 2 - Trip to Mud Island aborted due to similar weather conditions / rain squals. Stayed in the river checking pots and rebaiting... with some of the cat fish we caught on day 1.
Day 3 - I had purchased a hand held GPS for this day trip, hired an EPIRB, spent a small fortune on tackle (thanks to advice from several ausfishers on here re/- selection of tackle etc) so I was VERY KEEN to get some decent fishing in after two dissapointing days in BNE. Donned our life vests and logged with VMR on the way out of S'port seaway. We were met with well organised 1.5m swell, winds about 10-15 SE and light rain... We decided to push on, and headed for the scottish princess. The bait fish were not too hard to find, and within 20min of jigging we had a live well with little slimey yellow tail in... and pushed on to the 24's.
First drift and before we knew it - we had 2 charter vessels circling us (like 20m away one of them - which is bloody close when your in a wee little boat with lines out and their wake makes us bob around like corks in a pool lol). We knew we must have been on to an OK spot though lol. I boated a little 45cm squirey snapper on first drift... the drift was really quick actually - our drift on the gps looked more like a pasta noodle than a straight line too - we had moved more than 1/2km in seemingly little time.
BY now, the sun was well up - and I was getting excited - before my friend announces to me "I think we should do one more drift then head in"... I was like HAHAHA your so funny - but he wasnt laughing! He is used to fishing townsville to maggie island - and I dont think he is used to average conditions somehow... HE was doing the bildge pump every other minute, visably aggitated and feeling green around the gills..... With his lines wound in, seated in the holders, and his arms folded, I COULDNT BELIEVE it - but I knew my long awaited session was coming to an end - and fast!.. Not wanting to be a prick - I offered to head in - and he jumped at the chance... I couldnt help hide my long face though :-(
The seas had deteriorated by the time we passed back through the seaway however, so it was in a way a good thing we headed back in, in retrospect.
We pumped some yabbies from the eastern side of wave break and fished for a while around that island with poor results.... and pulled the pin, soaking wet and cold and miserable about 2pm.
Headed back to Brisbane and did a run up to the pots to pull them to take to jacobs for day 4 - AMAZING - but mental note to self - NEVER USE CAT FISH IN A CRAB POT AGAIN! - The cat fish remained untouched - with not a crab insight..... other than one tiny little blue swimmer (released), a 32cm super fat bream (released) and a 40cm cod (released)
Day 4 - Put the pots in one line of 8 with the bait that was productive in BNE river in a crabby looking spot at Jacobs - and fished the pin about 150m in from breakers in 9m of water. Burlied up with mix of bread crumbs, tuna oil, large amount of prawn heads / shells and old bait.... and started getting bites... only to pull in and have my nuclear chook SHREDDED and tail missing... Put out a gang of 4/0 with a hole squid - and bang - good bite, heavy weight - but no real fight..... A BLOODY CAT FISH! They must have followed us from the brissy river.
Again the rain came heavy and hard - and we were cold and soaked. The full length bimini did little for the rain coming in almost horizontal and after 8 hours of moving around, trying various spots and catching nothing keepable - we headed back to jacobs to collect the pots...
Every pot got as excited with at least one massive crab in (and loads of little ones, mixed mud and blue swimmer) - that was until we flipped her over and seen that she was indeed a she... I guess the area we dropped the pots in was so heavily crabbed for so long - the legal males would be far and few between.
Although the weather wasnt at all kind to us, and my mate is far from a deep sea fisherman - we had a lot of fun, and ended up with 10 heavy and full buck mud crabs and 2 buck blue swimmers. Not to mention we discovered a great crabbing spot only 20 mins from the ramp, and some great bait gathering grounds (mullet and yabbies) in our efforts.
Will try to attach some pics of the crabs now..
Happy belated Easter everyone.
We had planned to drop 8 crab pots the night he arrived, and keep it pretty limited to that as we didnt want to be too tired for the next 4 planned days.
Day 1 (Thurs) - Fish northern bay from 4 beacons to cape moreton including harries and check / rebait the pots on the way out and home
Day 2 (Fri) - Mud Island and check / rebait pots on way out and home
Day 3 (Sat) - Gold Coast - get some live bait around scottish princess and head to 24 fathom line for some bottom bashing. Once back at Brissy - duck out to Brisbane River to collect the pots
Day 4 (Sun) - Cabbage tree creek to Jumpin Pin area (with crab pots set around jacobs for the day only), chase prawns around powerlines and fish around the pin bar.
Day 1: With the pots dropped the night before, we headed straight to them - and from the first rise, noted some serious weight in the pot (especially with that crap thin nylon rope that burns your hands they sell with crab pots - note to self to change this today!) 4 crab pots in a line returned avergae 7 crabs per pot. (28 crabs in first string of 4). Males to females was 1:6. Legal to undersize (ignoring gender) was 1:3.5 (and jennies consistantly larger size, with almost all jennies well over legal size if they were bucks (bar 1 or 2, all undersize crabs were male) Second line of 4 some 2 klms away yeilded less overall numbers, same ratio male to females, but more keepers : undersize ratio (quality V's quantity).
Fishing planned for day 1 was aborted when we reached the mouth and started heading beyond the rock wall - to be met with howling winds, rain squals with visability so poor you couldnt see 30m in front of you, and messy just sub 1m chop from all directions - not comfortable conditions - and so we decided to stay in the river - and scored nothing but dirty cat fish after dirty cat fish! We kept some of these for crab pot baits.
Day 2 - Trip to Mud Island aborted due to similar weather conditions / rain squals. Stayed in the river checking pots and rebaiting... with some of the cat fish we caught on day 1.
Day 3 - I had purchased a hand held GPS for this day trip, hired an EPIRB, spent a small fortune on tackle (thanks to advice from several ausfishers on here re/- selection of tackle etc) so I was VERY KEEN to get some decent fishing in after two dissapointing days in BNE. Donned our life vests and logged with VMR on the way out of S'port seaway. We were met with well organised 1.5m swell, winds about 10-15 SE and light rain... We decided to push on, and headed for the scottish princess. The bait fish were not too hard to find, and within 20min of jigging we had a live well with little slimey yellow tail in... and pushed on to the 24's.
First drift and before we knew it - we had 2 charter vessels circling us (like 20m away one of them - which is bloody close when your in a wee little boat with lines out and their wake makes us bob around like corks in a pool lol). We knew we must have been on to an OK spot though lol. I boated a little 45cm squirey snapper on first drift... the drift was really quick actually - our drift on the gps looked more like a pasta noodle than a straight line too - we had moved more than 1/2km in seemingly little time.
BY now, the sun was well up - and I was getting excited - before my friend announces to me "I think we should do one more drift then head in"... I was like HAHAHA your so funny - but he wasnt laughing! He is used to fishing townsville to maggie island - and I dont think he is used to average conditions somehow... HE was doing the bildge pump every other minute, visably aggitated and feeling green around the gills..... With his lines wound in, seated in the holders, and his arms folded, I COULDNT BELIEVE it - but I knew my long awaited session was coming to an end - and fast!.. Not wanting to be a prick - I offered to head in - and he jumped at the chance... I couldnt help hide my long face though :-(
The seas had deteriorated by the time we passed back through the seaway however, so it was in a way a good thing we headed back in, in retrospect.
We pumped some yabbies from the eastern side of wave break and fished for a while around that island with poor results.... and pulled the pin, soaking wet and cold and miserable about 2pm.
Headed back to Brisbane and did a run up to the pots to pull them to take to jacobs for day 4 - AMAZING - but mental note to self - NEVER USE CAT FISH IN A CRAB POT AGAIN! - The cat fish remained untouched - with not a crab insight..... other than one tiny little blue swimmer (released), a 32cm super fat bream (released) and a 40cm cod (released)
Day 4 - Put the pots in one line of 8 with the bait that was productive in BNE river in a crabby looking spot at Jacobs - and fished the pin about 150m in from breakers in 9m of water. Burlied up with mix of bread crumbs, tuna oil, large amount of prawn heads / shells and old bait.... and started getting bites... only to pull in and have my nuclear chook SHREDDED and tail missing... Put out a gang of 4/0 with a hole squid - and bang - good bite, heavy weight - but no real fight..... A BLOODY CAT FISH! They must have followed us from the brissy river.
Again the rain came heavy and hard - and we were cold and soaked. The full length bimini did little for the rain coming in almost horizontal and after 8 hours of moving around, trying various spots and catching nothing keepable - we headed back to jacobs to collect the pots...
Every pot got as excited with at least one massive crab in (and loads of little ones, mixed mud and blue swimmer) - that was until we flipped her over and seen that she was indeed a she... I guess the area we dropped the pots in was so heavily crabbed for so long - the legal males would be far and few between.
Although the weather wasnt at all kind to us, and my mate is far from a deep sea fisherman - we had a lot of fun, and ended up with 10 heavy and full buck mud crabs and 2 buck blue swimmers. Not to mention we discovered a great crabbing spot only 20 mins from the ramp, and some great bait gathering grounds (mullet and yabbies) in our efforts.
Will try to attach some pics of the crabs now..
Happy belated Easter everyone.