Reply With QuoteOh, I'd probably say that the majority of them were about 80%full, with a couple of nice full felling ones amongst them. Dunno for sure yet, I'm waiting for them to cool before piggin out
Headed out into Cleveland Bay today in hopes of a feed of crab and a few barra fillets.
We took off from the CG ramp at about 8am this morning, so gentleman's hours, and headed straight acroos the bay to drop some pots and go and try and catch a barra.
Matty and I put in 7 pots, total, baited with grunter, trevally and mullet, and went off in search of some live bait.
Bait was absolutely every where, but proved very hard to get because it was so spread out due to the little tidal movement, and the massive amount of fresh coming out of the creeks.
We managed to get a handful of live mullet, in between flicking a few lures, so before we headed of to drown them, we check the pots after only an hour's soak.
We pulled in masses of big monster muddies in the first pot, but all were jennies, so they were tipped out and we reset the pot. We continued this pattern with heaps of big jennies in all our pots, but we managed to get about 9 bucks from our first run, so not too shabby.
Next we headed up to a spot of matt's where we would wait for the tide to change and hopefully get a barra coming back down out of the shallow mangroves. But all we got was sunburnt and a few midgee bites after an hour or so, so we elected to move, try and find some deeper water, and check the pots once again.
This run we only get another 5 to add to our kreels, so we reset and move on to find some barra.
We made our way up Coco, and were surprised at how deep it was in there (first time in that creek) so we prompty found the drop off which looked very good, with a few shows of big fishing holding the bottom. We despatched our livies to not get touch for another couple of hours. In the meantime, I tied up the crabs we already had, that were sitting on ice to put the to sleep.
Getting tired of doing nothing but being crispy fried, we again set off to check our line of pots once again, this time adding another 3 to the ice to 'sleep'. After resetting, the arvo seabreeze starting to kick in, nothing too serious, but we were getting starting to get sore from our sunburn, so we just threw the anchor over in some random location and threw out some baits for another 20-30min, before doing our final pot check, before packing them up and heading home.
Now for the exciting part (well the most exciting through out the day anyway) Pulling up the first pot saw us with more jennies and a few jjjjuuuust undersize very rusty bucks (breaks your heart when you throw them back, knowing they'll be absolutely chockers) we come to the second pot in the line and there's a big buck clinging to the outside of the pot. Without any thought for personal safety I pounced on it and promply threw it in the boat to lift the pot aboard. this happened to be the only legal buck for that pot, and we didn't even have to trap it!
The rest of the pots yeilded one more good sized buck, and yet more just under rusty buck and jennies.
Satisfied with what was filling the esky we set off home with a total of 18 muddies, some pretty bright red faces, and a smile on our dial.
Pic of the crabs count:
Oh, I'd probably say that the majority of them were about 80%full, with a couple of nice full felling ones amongst them. Dunno for sure yet, I'm waiting for them to cool before piggin out
well done boys! thats heaps of crabs.
ron.
reels screamin aboard Hyper- Active
Holy crap. Nice haul. A couple look green but the bulk of them look good.
I bet the fresh running out is helping. We're going next weekend in SEQ and after the latest lot of rain, I'm hoping it will be good.
PS. The one armed bloke half way down looks like he's doing a Rambo.
PPS how do you find tying them on the outside of the claws? Any escapees? I try and get the rope in the nippers.
Top feed of muddies there. Hope you've got a couple of icy cold beers to wash them down
Cheers Gazza
Probably the best way to check how full they are, is to buy one of those cheap styrene boxes, with the lids, wack in some ice, and put,say three crabs on ice, tape up the lid with duct tape, and stick them on a bus to Brisbane.,
I will collect them and see how full they actually are, and supply a written report for your records,
David
Damn, nice muddies there mate
top stuff,,, well done
I've never had as good a sesh on Muddies as you have here, makes my mouth water .... I'll just scroll up and have another look!!
Well done
Scalem
Well, my half of that haul was pretty good, though a couple of green ones, looks like they've been feeding up well, we only had one that was only half full, the rest were either full or not far from it. Curiously though, it was one of the rusty looking ones that was half full, and pinching the sides, it felt very solid, I guess there's no real sure fire way to tell.
After polishing off most of them last night, we made another assault today, this time armed with 1 extra POB and 5 more pots to make up 12 total.
One of our pots got cut off by some wa nker, but we managed to find it again. We tried for a few barra as well, but again, they didn't play the game so it was crabs that made up our catch again.
Due to the whole 32cm of run in the tide today, not much was happening, though we did manage another 9 bucks, but there was still plenty of big jennies around. Also caught a couple of banana prawns in the pots (literally a couple, so don't get too excited).
The most excitement of the day was when again, collecting the pots to head home, one felt verry heavy, hopiong this one was stuffed to the hilt with crabs, i got a wee bit excited, that was until the pot started fighting back! WTF?!
I layed into it a bit more and a whopping greatr tail started flailing about all over the place, a friggin big shark had stuck its head on the pot to get to the bait, mongrel bloody thing. It got itslef out no worries, and luckily, no damage to the pot.
Here's todays kreel:
Again, a few green looking shells in that lot, but after the amount of meat we got out of the last ones, I'm pretty confident they'll have a decent amount too.
I've also noticed that a lot of them are missing nippers, and legs as we pull them in, it must be a full scale war zone down there, as they muscle each other out to get the best breeding site.
Mate awesome stuff got to be extremly happy with that
Crab sandwiches mmmmmmmmmmm
JT
VHF CHANNEL 21
CALL SIGN : JT OR SC552(social club member)
There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot
I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges
Up here we Use Hussar as baits for real RED FISHS (SHSIIFDER)
Top effort Scott, was hard work all over today, but still having fun..
Fillet and Release Squad
I was down my local seafood supplier the other day.
Their price on cooked mud crabs was over $50 / Kg.
I am now much more interested in getting my pots in.
So at $50 a Kg was your trip worthwhile
cheers
Its the details, those little details, that make the difference.
I would be happy to have those haul and forget about barra...
Top work!
Cheers again for the muddie Scotty. He'll be tasty as for dinner tonight!!!
I may possibly have finished off all the home brew last night but, so I'll have to settle for water to wash it down
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