SEQ Snapper Shortage

[Spot82]

I got a call from Nathan (No Fear) on Thursday night for the usual reason of him wanting to poach more of my GPS marks, but this time it was for DI not 1770, but never the less the answer was the same as always, get your own bloody marks He then proceeded to ask if I wanted to do a quick over nighter in his boat with the plan to leave Shorncliffe and head to the Hards and East of DI to give his boat a final shakedown before it heads north for the winter, I checked the forecast and it was looking prime so I couldn't resist, couldn't resist giving Nath another touch up on the fishing score either haha.



The plan was to maybe hunt down a few of the very elusive and near extinct SEQ Snapper which our State government continues to tighten fishing restrictions on and possibly head further north and strike it lucky on a lost Red Emperor or two.


We left the ramp at about 2pm and headed north, stopped on the wire weed at Cal wide for a few drifts and it wasn't long before a couple of fish made it to the box. Moses Perch, Pearl Perch and a nice squapper about 2-3kg to me. Then just before the sun set Chris scored a legal AJ while I battled and lost a 20kg + AJ as it shook my bucktooth loose a couple of meters below the boat on my light snapper gear. I love fishing with this outfit, JDM Stella 6000PG loaded with Varivas PE3 braid and matched to 10-20lb Pro Blue GLoomis, for something which resembles a whiting rod this thing certainly has knocked over some quality fish. Was a shame I didn't get the AJ to the boat as it would have made a great pic before a quick release. Next drift before even getting close to the bottom I got a solid hit but missed the hook up but I stopped the jig and it wasn't 5 seconds before I was onto a solid fish again, this time I could tell it was another Snapper but a much better model than my first, after a good fight a quality knobby was netted and lifted into the boat and the other boats were trying to raid my tackle box to find a spare bucktooth jig.

Things slowed down so we headed further north and checked out a few spots on our way to the Barwon Banks, but there wasn't much doing so we kept heading north. We found a good show at the northern end of the Barwons and 3 of us had a few drops while two of the others got some shut eye. The fish weren't really on the chew but I did notice bait fish giving me a hiding about half way down so i swapped to a bait jig and quickly put 50 or so slimey mackeral in the esky for bait the next morning. Nathan insisted that we just drop the anchor in the middle of no where while we slept for a couple of hours but I jumped in the chair and drove back up to our mark and proceeded to anchor just in front of the pinnacle which had a lot of fish hanging off the top and northern side of it. dropped the pick and hung back just in front of the structure and then proceed to get a few ZZZZ, well tried to anyway. Seems a couple of the boys where cutting down trees with chainsaws in their sleep and with all the racket I only managed 1-2 hours sleep.

My alarm went off at 5am and myself and Nathan were quickly up and dropping lines as the first bit of light started to appear on the horizon. I got smoked by a good fish on my light gear and lost my wind on leader so quickly grabbed my red catching gear and rigged it up with a PEtackle fly on a 2/0 Reefmaster with a size 8 ball sinker and whacked on half a slimey. As I got about halfway down I slowed up my decent and sure enough well off the bottom I got crunched! Up come a nice Snapper about 4kg and 70cm which was quickly dispached to the kill bin. The other boys had awoken and got themselves organised and were now dropping to the bottom. We had an hour and a half of mayhem as everyone caught and lost good snapper, well everyone except Ben who was watching me score snapper one after the other standing right next to him, I even grabbed a perfect bait that he had previously had on and dropped it down to score a nice 3-4kg fish, poor guy just wasn't his day and I reckon he would have struggled to catch a fish at seaworld, and all the other boys let him know about it haha. Luckily he scored his first snapper which was number 20 for the boat and our bag limit reached before the sun got too high and the fish shut down. In amongst the Snapper mayhem I hooked up to an absolute beast of an AJ or Kingy which had Seano hiding as he waited for my rod to snap in half and come flying over his side of the boat, this thing had me buckled over the side of the boat and even with some serious drag it was still heading to its reefy home, I managed to stop him but the 150lb leader between my two hooks failed and we were all left wondering how big the fish was! The smallest fish was 55cm and it was funny that we only caught 5 fish over 70cm as per the new bag limits and for the record I scored close to half the catch while Nath, Chris and Sean were pretty much evenly matched.

We upped anchor and went for a quick tow but didn't raise anything, with so much bait around we knew there would be billfish around but we were a bit late getting started and missed the tide. We stopped on a couple of spots on the way home, mainly new pieces of reef we found while travelling but the fish were very quiet to say the least. We left Cal wide at about 12pm and would have been back at the ramp in good time except Nath thought it would be a great idea to turn one of his props into a bent up piece of scrap metal by hitting a sizable piece of timber about 8 mile from the ramp in the Bay so the trip was extended by another hour.

All in all it was a good run with a fair amount of kms for the newly refurbished 7m Shark Cat and a few more issues sorted and a couple of more to get fixed before heading north for the winter. Best of all was the banter between the crew, great weather and being able to teach the boys a couple of new tricks, although their wives might not be thanking me when they go out to by Stella/Loomis combos lol.

If this is anything to go by this Snapper season is going to be a cracker! My advice would be to grab some bucktooth jigs and small flys from PEtackle and float them slowly to the bottom. Fish the early morning and late arvo sessions around the moon and this will see you get the best results. Feel free to use paternoster rigs but be prepared for the same results as Ben got, which was very average compared to the rest of us who were floating baits down. As for bait, snapper aren't really fussy, fresh is best but not necessarily required. I used Pillies, Slimey Mackeral, Mullet and Squid and all resulted in fish, although I tend to like the oily baits the best.

Oh and Nath's new Simrad setup with Chirp transducer is insane (NSS12, BSM2 and 1kw Through-hull chirp transducer)!! The clarity and fish shows this thing produces is beyond me! The way technology is going no fish will be safe!























Talk about tough fish! Seano mentioned that this was caused by a type of calcium deficiency?? Can anyone shed anymore light on this?

[Crunchy]

Nice work....good read.

PS typo
"caught 5 fish over 75cm as per the new bag limits" 70cm guess you mean...bullshit rules

[fishfeeder]

Mate top fish and read.
Yet again I am envious as to the quality of fish you manage to score !!

Cheers
Brett

[robtarr]

always entertaining to read and backed up with quality pics - thanks

cheers Rob

[No Fear]

Once again - all I can say is I (along with the rest of the crew) got hammered by the master...Although in my defense, I was just taking my boat for a shakedown cruise (dont think that excuse will cut it with Anthony but I will try my luck.)
Anthony also forgot to mention that at one stage on the wire weed, we had a school of about 20 small squid hanging around the boat. We managed to get a few on board and the tasty buggers mysteriously disappeared from my esky!!!!!
I know there are a few of you that are interested in my boat and at this stage, I am very happy with the final product and what Pete has handed over (or more I ripped from his ownership). There is still a couple of engine glitches that need sorting but the actual engine block has been running beautifully considering it sat in Pete's yard for over 5 years. Any issues I have had, Pete has been sensational in assisting with the repaires/modifications and it would appear we are now not far off from having Tom Cat all sorted and settled down.
As Anthony said, the Simrad Chirp gear far exceeds the performance I was getting from my Lowrance stuff and apart from this, its other greatest positive is how easy it is to use. I still need to play around with it a bit more but was paying attention to other things on board this trip. We did about 220kms for the trip and burnt about 200litres but the majority of this was used on the way out when I was sitting on 22/23 knots. We found that its cruising speed was about 18/19knots which improved the fuel consumption considerably - potentially as low as 15 l/h but I will be testing these figures on future trips. More than happy though only burning 200 litres with a fully loaded boat (5 people on board, a mountain of gear and 700kgs of fuel).
Thanks to Anthony for a ripper trip and it was payback for the trip at 1770 the weekend before. I've had a pretty handy fortnight of fishing to say the least!!!
Biggest downside for the trip was finding some debris on the way home........off to the prop shop for me!!! !

[Jigsrule]

Good read Anthony and top effort.
I always learn a lot from your posts.
Cheers

[vertico]

awesome report and pics as usual, i might have to plan a barwon banks assault myself....its been a few years since i filled up the esky with pink fish....
Once again great report and looks like those bucktooths are doing the damage this winter

thanks

Sean

[rainbow runner]

Another good read Anthony

Certainly are landing a few top fish of late

Mark

[TREVELLY]

It's all lies - I went to The Banks on Saturday and caught no keeper snapper - so there is none there

Where did you really catch them guys!?

Noice fish and a good read - thanks for posting

[aerordauto]

Great report where on your trip did u find the most snapper?and what depth.
Cheers mark.

[robvee]

great read tx mate :-)
Cool pix too !!!

[lightsout76]

Cheers for the report Anthony, as usual top report and pics always enjoy reading your reports.

Thanks again,
Leon.

[fisho8]

One of the best offshore reports I have seen so far good stuff mate great read and some very nice fish well done!!!!.

[Spot82]

Majority of the fish were caught in 70-80 metres on the outside edge of the banks, seems the snaps still seem to be out a bit deeper with good catches from the 50's off the GC and another mate of mine bagging out at Deep Tempest on Thursday. The big one I am hold was taken in 50 or so metres at Cal wide so they are certainly around. Just have to be there and ready before there is any light....

Thanks to everyone for the kind words, did have a cracker week, 10 days scoring some great fish. I also scored a 105cm Barra in the Boyne the Friday before I went to 1770, so its all been happening!

Anthony

[lightsout76]

I was gonna mention that i had seen some pics of some prehistoric sized pearlies from a 1770 trip you'd done on the may long weekend so i look forward to that report if ones coming?

Cheers,
Leon.