Noosa offshore

[bugman]

Left Noosa just before high tide on the bar at 5:30am on Saturday morning and headed to Sunshine Reef.
Fished for three hours with little success moving around a lot.
Headed out to Chardons and found active bait fish on the bottom and anchored up.
Fish were constant but with size being an issue. Also the amount of grinners made it hard to get your bait to any other fish. Some grinners were over 3 foot long. They were a pain but kept things interesting.
Between two of us we managed around 80 fish for the day including 40 grinners and sharks. Finished with 12 keepers (a real mixed bag) parrot, pearl perch, squire, mangrove jack, maori wrasse, trag jew, and sweetlip.
Biggest went 3.8 kilos (see attached pic).
The weather was the best I'd ever seen - as flat as a tack without a breath of wind.
Bar crossing was terrible on way home with little water in the channel once you got across the breakers.
Have a look at the photo of two fish on one hook. Using a gang rig of 2x4o's I managed a sweetlip on one hook and a parrot on the other. Both were released.
PS I've called the red fish on the right hand side of the third photo as a mangarove jack. It certainly looked like that as it came out of the water but I just want to double check because it will be my first Jack.
Regards
Bugman

[bugman]

I can't add more than one photo file so here's another.

[bugman]

And here's a third photo

[Lucky_Phill]

Nice fish and good report. The water looks G R E A T !!!

Mate of mine has been braining the spanish at Sunshine over the last couple of weeks. even got a snapper to rise to his trolled tailor baits.

I believe that the place may have fired overnight there. But, you can't always be there cause of the bar..... might be worth putting in at Mooloolaba for a overnighter, and if the weather turned, at least it's a safe trip back to harbour. ;) ;D

[davo189]

Thanks for the report Bugman,

You're right about the Noosa bar, it can change so quick with a run out tide - I gota say that it keeps a lot of people from fishing out wide in that part of the coast.

On the question about the Jack, it's hard to tell from the pic. One of the most reliable signs is the destinctive blue line which runs from below the eye and towards the snout. Combine that with a very formidable set of fangs and an eye that seems to watch your every move when you are messin around with the hook and you've got a Jack. (A very intelligent fish as I'm sure a lot of fellow fisho's will know.)

HTH,

Davo. :)