new pb tailor

[nigelr]

8076180760Latched on to this bad girl at dawn this morning, fishing a nice spit down the beach.
Had an idea there was the odd big fella about, even thought I may have seen one co-habitating with a school of 4-7kg jew whilst spearing a few weeks ago.
This fish was in fantastic condition, very deep and fat as!
Pulled the rusty old-school lie detector down to 11lbs, beating my previous pb of 10lb caught about 5 years ago. Both fish weighed gutted, gilled and scaled.
I love fishing for these suckers, they are so enigmatic, feisty and downright savage, and the bigger they are, the better they are to eat. I've put several sessions in of late, a couple of good night tides last week, and a previous morning sesh on Friday just gone, all without success, and the night sessions without even a bite. Time spent trying will always pay off eventually though!
30lb braid, 100lb trace, 6/0 SS gang hooks, flat-tail mullet fillet.
I've found using anything less than 100lb trace a waste of time with these fish.

[Fish_gutz]

Solid Tailor , congrats on the upgraded pb

[Matt_Campbell]

Great fish Nigel. So 11lb cleaned would be 12.5lb whole? That is a very solid fish for that area. Congrats.

[greenie61]

Thats a nice tailor mate, just rewards for the effort.
Can you give a couple directions to the Gold Coast.

[Agrav8_and_Lulu]

Great to see a nice tailor finally getting caught. I am planning on getting into them this year for the first time. Thanks & congrats.

[nigelr]

Thats a nice tailor mate, just rewards for the effort.
Can you give a couple directions to the Gold Coast.
Thanks for that greenie61; unfortunately can't help with the Goldie as I'm down near Coffs Harbour in NSW.

[greenie61]

Thanks for that greenie61; unfortunately can't help with the Goldie as I'm down near Coffs Harbour in NSW.

Just steer a few up this way, there few & far between at the moment.

[carnster]

Mate that is a stonker, congrats, would love to have seen a pick with you holding it.

[nigelr]

;Dlol, rest assured carnster the fish is way better looking than me!

80763

[phantomphisher]

Absolute monster!!!!! how long was it?

[chief]

Great fish, My best from the beach is around 6 lb and I reckon it had a truck load of bad attitude, can only dream of what that sucker had...Cheers

[Goodoo haven]

Thats a nice fish. Well done mate.

[childers]

Trophy fish , great effort nigelr

Would be interested to know his length

Cheers

[nigelr]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.
Unfortunately I have already knocked the fillets of it and really didn't think to measure the length but the thing I noticed with this fish was not so much how long it was but rather how fat and deep it was, really really solid.
I've found there can be quite a variation with tailor, some are long and thin, some sort of average, and others very stocky.
This one suprised me; despite appearing very well fed, rather than being completely stuffed with whitebait as they often are, the stomach was completely empty.

[bondy99]

Nigelr

Well done mate, nice fish, not after specific location but did you catch it north or south of Bellingen Harbour?

Is Diamond Head the next place up from Coffs, heading North? Been 30 years since i've been down that way so I'm rusty.

Bondy

[nigelr]

Hey Bondy, yes just north of the Bellinger River.
Diamond Head is between Port Macquarie and Taree, from memory. North of Coffs is Red Rock, Wooli, Yamba, Iluka, Evans, Ballina, Byron etc.
Personally on our beach here I reckon there's a large element of luck with these fish, I reckon they are mostly solitary past a certain size and it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time when one is cruising past, we have no deepwater headlands locally for them to hang out etc. I have on the very odd occasion seen a large one hanging with school mulloway, and have pulled and seen others pull them out of salmon schools; reputedly the skinned flesh of salmon is a useful bait for them. The wolves of the coast I reckon!
Mattooty has some great insight on his recent post; now that was a really big tailor!
Good luck with your hunting; I am thinking the lead-up to the next full moon should be good.

[35kg jew]

Hi nigler great catch mate well done excellent size tailor and congrats on pb. I been hunting them every night down my way but not alot of action as of yet but did end up with a bag of choppers this morn sooo maybe there not to far off :) . U get yours on the run out tide?

[nigelr]

Hey 35kg, got him bang on the dot of high tide. Mediocre tide at best, but I've found that if I fish a 'declining' tide, as opposed to a 'making' or 'peak' tide either near dawn or after dark, if I'm going to get a tailor bite at all, it will be right on the tide change. Uncanny how smart these critters are! I've found that when fishing specifically for greenbacks, ie generally after dark, I'll very rarely catch a chopper. Too many predators hunting them I reckon, lol!
Cheers and good luck with the Cabarita comp!

[AmrK87]

100lbs leader... whatttt?

[nigelr]

hehe, yeah AmrK87, they chew through 80lb like cotton. I tell myself they can't see the trace at night lol, but whatever, it works!
I do use a casting leader, of 30lb mono about 6-7 mtres long. Saves the fingers when casting!

[Franco]

Great fish Nigel! Bloody awesome.

Can't Wait to get stuck into a few up here but they haven't turned up in any real quantities yet

Big-arse fish like that wouldn't think twice about eating something attached to 100lb mono trace. in fact last few years Ive gone back to using 20-40lb 7 strand wire when bait fishing for them and have caught better quality fish and more fish. The quality of the bait is far more important than the trace used - they're such aggressive feeders as mentioned above.

Well done Nigel and congrats on an Awesome PB!

[bondy99]

Nigelr,

Thanks for that and refreshing my memory. Wooli was the place I was thinking of. Bloody big seas and swell hitting the coast up here, Maybe the next full moon in July might be better, hopefully without the crap winds and big seas. I will be trying the beaches this Friday and early Saturday morning down towards Byron Bay.

6 to 7 metre long leader?? How do you manage to cast that bugger out , rocket launcher?

30cm is usually my leader. 120lb jinkai but also have 120lb multi wire trace.

Bondy

[nigelr]

nah bondy, trace is 100lb mono, then 30lb casting leader, then 30lb braid.
ie, hooks, 100lb trace to swivel, snap link, swivel, 100lb trace with running ball sinker on, swivel, 30lb casting leader x 6-7 mtres, albright to 30lb braid.
hope that makes sense, easier if I could draw it!
8m swell and 2.0m tide tonight, bye bye beach!

[mattooty]

Theres a hell of a lot of casts between any fish over that 3-4kg mark. That fish i got a couple of weeks ago was the first stonker I've caught in the last 2 seasons, after hitting them fairly regularly. We've always seemed to get a good quality class of fish trolling bommies for spanish macks in the 10-15m mark, any deeper and we've only found school sized fish and any shallower and the boating gets dangerous and the chances of spanish decreases.
I have got most of my bigger fish on poppers but I think only because I enjoy fishing them, I'd definitely get alot more fish on baits. A mate was chasing jew a few nights ago and got onto 2 good fish in the 3.5kg region. He doesn't eat them and in fact, the first was stripped down into baits, and the second came from a big strip of tailor.

[Mossy247]

They are some solid units there mate, nice catch. I haven't seen shoulders like that since the chinese swim team at the olympics.
tight lines - Mossy

[Just_chips]

I've found there can be quite a variation with tailor, some are long and thin, some sort of average, and others very stocky.

Was it carrying any roe or milt? They really fatten themselves up before spawning. Might be a bit early in the year for that though.....

A bit of an observation from last season: Having a two week stay on Fraser island last September, I saw the fish progressively build condition with ridiculous sessions amidst feeding frenzies, all these fish were full of roe or milt and built themselves up to have massive shoulders in comparison to their heads and very stocky bodies, it was great fishing and slugs retrieved slowly attracted much more attention than something ripped back at warp speed. Obviously the fish were getting fat and a bit lazy looking for easier meals.

Then they went completely off the bite for a couple of days, which I am assuming in hindsight was to do their business and get down to some sexy time. When they came back on the bite they were once again very aggressive but this time the slower retrieves were ignored with fish being prepared to hit the faster slugs, the fish were now skinny having lost all the condition of the few days prior and were now devoid of roe and milt (obviously shagging lots...), they now had big heads compared to their bodies and overall length.

The fish I'm talking about here were all in the 60-70cm bracket so getting up to 3.5kgs when they were fat. So what I'm trying to demonstrate is these fish seem to be able to add or lose condition as required depending on the availability of bait, hence such a variation in weights of the fish of similar sizes.

Kev

[nigelr]

Kev, I could tell it was a female, but there wasn't any great amount of roe present. Might have just been fattening up in preparation.

[johnlikes2fish]

Nice fish short stumpy model, enigmatic is a good way to describe them nice reward for some hard time put in

[Just_chips]

Hmmm, so a short, stocky, aggressively feeding female.

Are fish really so different to people?