More Snapper off Mooloolaba
The Seabreeze forecast was just too good to ignore for last Saturday, so plans were made with the old man to go wide of Mooloolaba for the day. After a 2:30am alarm clock we were on the water by 3:45am and trying to beat the early dawn now. We passed the usual haunts at Murphies and decided to keep going even though first light was already happening. After 1 hour of calm cruising we pulled up in some 60m country and snagged a couple of small snapper on the very first drop. Things were looking very promising.
As can happen the anchor dragged off the spot and the fish went quiet. Then the GPS decided to play a silly game of only showing the current position when turned on, but then not updating as we tried to find new ground. We just used the sounder alone to find a nice ledge in 74m and re-anchored on the spot. The wind dropped out to such an extent that the boat wanted to lay at 90 degrees to the rope. I had to go up to the front deck to retrieve a braid floater line to prevent it from slicing the rope. I had wound it up 3/4 of the way when it took off for the bottom. What was this? Anyhow after playing the fish carefully for quite a few minutes around the anchor while balancing on the bow I recovered a nice 4kg snapper.
Once down the back I found that half the other rods and the old fellow were loaded up with the rest of the school. It only took about 35 minutes to reach our bag limit and then we couldn't get a line past them to find something else on the bottom. We had to move as it seemed silly feeding the dolphin 3kg fish. After hauling up a huge rock on the anchor prongs I had enough and made the call to shoot back in to add to the esky with a few spanner crabs.
At 35 knts it only took 30 minutes to get to the spanner ground and set the trays out.
We fished at Murphies while waiting for the crabs and continued the dolphin feeding routine, this time with 3 of them circling the boat relentlessly. I think there are some smart, fat dolphins out there that have heard about the snapper regulations and are taking advantage of the situation. We ended up with 6 nice crabs to go with the 8 snapper so we shot home at 12 midday for a beer and a rest.
I think my old faded orange boat must attract the orange species, but I'm not complaining!!
Life is like that!
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