-
Ausfish Silver Member
Almost No Crabs - snapper saved the night.
I convinced my mate Pete to go out chasing sand crabs yesterday afternoon. We launched the boat and punched out to my usual spot for sand crabs, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. After placing 8 pots out, and marking their location on the GPS, we ran back to the mouth of the river to fish the retaining walls over the top of the tide.
I had a couple of packets of frozen banana prawns left over from last years cast netting season, so we used them up for bait, casting unweighted peeled tails up to the wall on 8lb braid. My first cast was nailed instantly with the fish breaking the surface on the hookup. After a nice tussle, a 39cm snapper went back wearing a yellow tag. We managed to catch a nice steady progression of fish over the top of the tide, and ended up tagging 11 snapper with 2 fish at 40cms, and 8 of those fish being legal size or better. We also caught and released 7 bream, with Pete getting the best one at 41cms overall length (37cms fork length).
Once the tide started dropping a bit, we started to get plagued by rat bream and small moses perch, so we donned the wet weather gear and went back to gather the pots. A very disapointing result on the crabs, with only 2 keeper buck sandies and 2 jennies released out of 8 pots. I would usually expect to get around 10 keepers out of 4 pots in this location, so it looks like the crabs have moved on from this area.
Still the tagged snapper made for a great evening, and I am going to get back and try to tag a heap more over the coming couple of weeks - at least until the new boat arrives home, and the tinny will get garaged for a bit, while I play with the new toy. Did not bother to take any photos - got lots of shots of tagged fish in my collection.
Happy new year everyone - catch lots in 2014.
Cheers
Jeff
Posting Permissions
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
-
Forum Rules